What is Digital Health and Informatics?

Digital health can be defined as health and healthcare in the context of digital societies (the people, organisations and things engaged in persistent digital interactions).

About digital health:

• harvests data, information and knowledge in real time from all societal activities, not just interactions with the health system and/or data traditionally regarded as “health” data
• uses sophisticated analytics to distil knowledge from these data
• intervenes in the widest possible range of societal and economic activities and technologies to encourage and generate better health and better value for health investments
• is citizen (not provider/customer/patient) centric, decentralised and requires health service providers to participate, not control.

Reference: What is digital health? And why does it matter?
David Rowlands February 2020

About health informatics

Health informatics is the science and practice around information in health that leads to informed and assisted health care. ‘Informed’ here means ‘that the right information about the subject (consumer, patient or population) together with relevant health knowledge, is available at the right time and in a form that allows it to be used. ‘Assisted’ here means ‘that the job of the health care worker is made safer and easier and that the health consumer is supported in their decisions and actions’.