Information Technology's Role in Global Healthcare Systems

Over the past few decades, modern information technology has made a significant impact on people’s daily lives worldwide. In the field of health care and prevention, there has been a progressing penetration of assistive health services such as personal health records, supporting apps for chronic diseases, or preventive cardiological monitoring.

In 2020, the range of personal health services appeared to be almost unmanageable, accompanied by a multitude of different data formats and technical interfaces. The exchange of health-related data between different healthcare providers or platforms may therefore be difficult or even impossible. In addition, health professionals are increasingly confronted with medical data that were not acquired by themselves, but by an algorithmic “black box”. Even further, externally recorded data tend to be incompatible with the data models of classical healthcare information systems.From the individual’s perspective, digital services allow for the monitoring of their own health status. However, such services can also overwhelm their users, especially elderly people, with too many features or barely comprehensible information. It therefore seems highly relevant to examine whether such “always at hand” services exceed the digital literacy levels of average citizens.In this context, this reprint presents innovative, health-related applications or services emphasizing the role of user-centered information technology, with a special focus on one of the aforementioned aspects.