Institute for Global Health, University College London, London, UK.
Institute for Global Health, Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR), University College London, London, UK.
Glob Public Health. 2023 Jan;18(1):2241894. doi: 10.1080/17441692.2023.2241894.
How can governing digital health for infectious disease outbreaks be enhanced? In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has simultaneously represented both the potential and marked limitations of digital health practices for infectious disease outbreaks. During the pandemic's initial stages, states along with Big Data and Big Tech actors unleashed a scope of both established and experimental digital technologies for tracking infections, hospitalisations, and deaths from COVID-19 - and sometimes exposure to the virus SARS-CoV-2. Despite the proliferation of these technologies at the global level, transnational and cross-border integration, and cooperation within digital health responses to COVID-19 often faltered, while digital health regulations were fragmented, contested, and uncoordinated. This article presents a critiquing reflection of approaches to conceptualising, understanding, and implementing digital health for infectious disease outbreaks, observed from COVID-19 and previous examples. In assessing the strengths and limitations of existing practices of governing digital health for infectious disease outbreaks, this article particularly examines 'informal' digital health to build upon and consider how digitised responses to addressing and governing infectious disease outbreaks may be reconceptualised, revisited, or revised.
如何加强传染病疫情的数字健康治理？在许多方面，COVID-19 大流行同时展示了数字健康实践在传染病疫情防控方面的潜力和明显的局限性。在大流行的初始阶段，各国以及大数据和大型科技参与者针对 COVID-19 的感染、住院和死亡情况——有时还包括接触 SARS-CoV-2 病毒——部署了一系列成熟的和实验性的数字技术。尽管这些技术在全球范围内得到了广泛应用，但数字健康应对 COVID-19 的跨国和跨境整合以及合作往往受挫，而数字健康监管则碎片化、有争议且不协调。本文从 COVID-19 和以前的例子出发，对传染病疫情数字健康的概念化、理解和实施方法进行了批判性反思。在评估传染病疫情数字健康治理现有实践的优缺点时，本文特别考察了“非正式”数字健康，以在此基础上，进一步探讨如何重新构想、重新审视或修改数字化应对和治理传染病疫情的方法。
