Prabhune Akash, Bhat Sachin, Mallavaram Aishwarya, Mehar Shagufta Ayesha, Srinivasan Surya
Health and Information Technology, Institute of Health Management Research, Bangalore, IND.
Health, Public Affairs Centre, Bangalore, IND.
Cureus. 2023 Nov 17;15(11):e48977. doi: 10.7759/cureus.48977. eCollection 2023 Nov.
The objective of this paper was to evaluate and compare the quantity and sustainability of digital health initiatives in the South Asia region before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study used a two-step methodology of (a) descriptive analysis of digital health research articles published from 2016 to 2021 from South Asia in terms of stratification of research articles based on diseases and conditions they were developed, geography, and tasks wherein the initiative was applied and (b) a simple and replicable tool developed by authors to assess the sustainability of digital health initiatives using experimental or observational study designs. The results of the descriptive analysis highlight the following: (a) there was a 40% increase in the number of studies reported in 2020 when compared to 2019; (b) the three most common areas wherein substantive digital health research has been focused are health systems strengthening, ophthalmic disorders, and COVID-19; and (c) remote consultation, health information delivery, and clinical decision support systems are the top three commonly developed tools. We developed and estimated the inter-rater operability of the sustainability assessment tool ascertained with a Kappa value of 0.806 (±0.088). We conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a positive impact on digital health research with an improvement in the number of digital health initiatives and an improvement in the sustainability score of studies published during the COVID-19 pandemic.
本文的目的是评估和比较新冠疫情之前及期间南亚地区数字健康计划的数量和可持续性。该研究采用了两步法：（a）对2016年至2021年在南亚发表的数字健康研究文章进行描述性分析，分析内容包括根据所针对的疾病和状况、地理位置以及应用该计划的任务对研究文章进行分层；（b）作者开发了一种简单且可复制的工具，用于使用实验性或观察性研究设计评估数字健康计划的可持续性。描述性分析结果突出了以下几点：（a）与2019年相比，2020年报告的研究数量增加了40%；（b）实质性数字健康研究主要集中的三个最常见领域是卫生系统加强、眼科疾病和新冠疫情；（c）远程会诊、健康信息传递和临床决策支持系统是最常开发的三大工具。我们开发并估计了可持续性评估工具的评分者间可操作性，kappa值为0.806（±0.088）。我们得出结论，新冠疫情对数字健康研究产生了积极影响，数字健康计划的数量有所增加，且新冠疫情期间发表的研究的可持续性得分也有所提高。
