Venkataramanan Ramachandran, Pradhan Akash, Kumar Abhishek, Purushotham Arnie, Alajlani Mohannad, Arvanitis Theodoros N
Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.
Research Division, Karkinos Healthcare, Mumbai, India.
Front Digit Health. 2022 Jun 27;4:916342. doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2022.916342. eCollection 2022.
COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to delivery of various cancer care services as efforts were put to control the outbreak of the pandemic. Although the pandemic has highlighted the inadequacies of the system but has also led to emergence of a new cancer care delivery model which relies heavily on digital mediums. Digital health is not only restricted to virtual dissemination of information and consultation but has provided additional benefits ranging from support to cancer screening, early and more accurate diagnosis to increasing access to specialized care. This paper evaluates the challenges in the adoption of digital technologies to deliver cancer care services and provides recommendation for large-scale adoption in the Indian healthcare context.
We performed a search of PubMed and Google Scholar for numerous terms related to adoption of digital health technologies for cancer care during pandemic. We also analyze various socio-ecological challenges-from individual to community, provider and systematic level-for digital adoption of cancer care service which have existed prior to pandemic and lead to digital inequalities.
Despite encouraging benefits accruing from the adoption of digital health key challenges remain for large scale adoption. With respect to user the socio-economic characteristics such as age, literacy and socio-cultural norms are the major barriers. The key challenges faced by providers include regulatory issues, data security and the inconvenience associated with transition to a new system.
For equitable digital healthcare, the need is to have a participatory approach of all stakeholders and urgently addressing the digital divide adequately. Sharing of health data of public and private hospitals, within the framework of the Indian regulations and Data Protection Act, is critical to the development of digital health in India and it can go a long way in better forecasting and managing cancer burden.
新冠疫情对各种癌症护理服务的提供造成了重大干扰，因为当时正在努力控制疫情的爆发。尽管疫情凸显了系统的不足之处，但也催生了一种严重依赖数字媒介的新的癌症护理提供模式。数字健康不仅限于信息和咨询的虚拟传播，还带来了额外的好处，从支持癌症筛查、实现更早和更准确的诊断到增加获得专科护理的机会。本文评估了采用数字技术提供癌症护理服务所面临的挑战，并为在印度医疗背景下大规模采用数字技术提供了建议。
我们在PubMed和谷歌学术上搜索了许多与疫情期间采用数字健康技术进行癌症护理相关的术语。我们还分析了从个人到社区、提供者和系统层面的各种社会生态挑战，这些挑战在疫情之前就存在，导致了数字不平等，影响了癌症护理服务的数字采用。
尽管采用数字健康带来了令人鼓舞的好处，但大规模采用仍面临关键挑战。就用户而言，年龄、识字率和社会文化规范等社会经济特征是主要障碍。提供者面临的关键挑战包括监管问题、数据安全以及向新系统过渡带来的不便。
为了实现公平的数字医疗保健，需要所有利益相关者采取参与式方法，并迫切充分解决数字鸿沟问题。在印度法规和《数据保护法》的框架内，共享公立和私立医院的健康数据对于印度数字健康的发展至关重要，并且在更好地预测和管理癌症负担方面可以发挥很大作用。
