CHI Survey: Evidence for Digital Health

CHI is building a digital health evidence resource and requests your submissions of leading data/studies/etc., to support responsible policy decisions impacting the use of digital health and medical services and devices.

 

Despite a growing body of evidence about digital health and medicine, broad skepticism remains about efficacy and whether digitized tools produce better patient outcomes, augment population health, lower costs, improve the caregiver experience, and expand access.  In fact, there exists an assumption that with the unprecedented number of recent policy changes enacted during the Public Health Emergency (PHE) for COVID-19, more evidence exists to substantiate the widespread use of digital health in clinical practice.  Although those policy changes contributed to a record uptake of new digital health services, unfortunately evidence is slowly trickling in and those flexibilities will simply end upon the expiration of the federal COVID-19 response on May 11, 2023.  The continuing problem underlies long overdue policy changes needed to support digital health: a perceived lack of evidence and research that justifies digital health tools’ efficacy and quality.

 

To address this problem, CHI is creating a new interactive evidence resource dedicated to advancing the understanding digital health tools’ effectiveness and cost savings. The development and maintenance of this resource will be overseen by experts at the intersection of key digital health inflection points (research/evaluation, payment/coding, FDA clearance/approval), and curated and maintained by CHI research staff which include researchers from the Systems Medicine Program of the Georgetown University Medical Center. Modalities/technologies to be initially included in such a resource include voice/video telehealth, remote physiologic monitoring, remote therapeutic monitoring, and machine learning/artificial intelligence.

 

We aim to compile the best evidence possible to respond to short-term opportunities. Past these immediacies, CHI’s new digital health evidence resource will have numerous benefits.

 

Later in 2023, CHI will officially launch the evidence resource during a public event in conjunction with a media campaign. With your support, we plan to update this resource to reflect the latest and most compelling evidence of digital health tools’ effectiveness and quality.