Digital public health—an overview

Abstract

The rapid development and proliferation of digital health technologies have not only changed the medical professions, but offer great potential for public health, particularly in health promotion and disease prevention. At the same time, this emerging field is also characterized by conceptual and terminological fuzziness, a marked lack of high-quality evidence, and an absence of an honest discussion of unintended consequences and side effects. Further challenges for digital public health lie in the fact that the development of new health technologies is mainly driven by technological progress and less by evidence-based needs and research in public health. In this overview paper, we aim at conceptually denoting the field of digital public health, using principal public health functions as guiding principles. We discuss some current applications of digital health technologies in fulfilling public health functions and propose a needs-based development of digital health technologies. We will further address specific challenges to digital public health, in particular socio-economic differences in the usage of and profiting from digital health technologies, data protection and privacy issues, as well as ethical issues.