Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Sep 24, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 24, 2021 - Nov 19, 2021
Date Accepted: Nov 15, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The digital health paradox: international policy perspectives to address the increased health inequalities for people living with disabilities
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the uptake of digital health worldwide and highlighted many benefits of these innovations. However, it also stressed the magnitude of inequalities regarding accessing digital health. This article explores the potential benefits of digital technologies for the global population, with particular reference to people living with disabilities, taking the autism community as a case study. We ultimately explore policies in Sweden, Australia, Canada, Estonia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to learn how policies can lay an inclusive foundation for digital health systems. We conclude that digital health ecosystems should be designed with health equity at the forefront to avoid deepening existing health inequalities. We call for a more sophisticated understanding of digital health literacy to better assess the readiness to adopt digital health innovations. Finally, people living with disabilities should be positioned at the centre of digital health policy and innovations to ensure they are not left behind.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.