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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Digit. Health
Sec. Health Technology Implementation
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2024.1399992
This article is part of the Research Topic Digital Health Innovations for Patient-Centered Care View all 5 articles

It's late, but not too late to transform health systems: A global digital citizen science observatory for local solutions to global problems

Provisionally accepted
Tarun Katapally Tarun Katapally 1,2,3,4*
  • 1 School of Health Studies, DEPtH Lab, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University, Canada, London, Ontario, Canada
  • 2 Lawson Health Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada
  • 3 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
  • 4 Hirabai Cowasji Jehangir Medical Research Institute (HCJMRI), Pune, Maharashtra, India

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A key challenge in monitoring, managing, and mitigating global health crises is the need to coordinate clinical decision-making with systems outside of healthcare. In the 21 st century, human engagement with Internet-connected ubiquitous devices generates an enormous amount of big data, which can be used to address complex, intersectoral problems via participatory epidemiology and mHealth approaches that can be operationalized with digital citizen science. These big datawhich traditionally exist outside of health systemsare underutilized even though their usage can have significant implications for prediction and prevention of communicable and noncommunicable diseases. To address critical challenges and gaps in big data utilization across sectors, a Digital Citizen Science Observatory (DiScO) is being developed by the Digital Epidemiology and Population Health Laboratory by scaling up existing digital health infrastructure. DiScO's development is informed by the Smart Framework, which leverages ubiquitous devices for ethical surveillance. The Observatory will be operationalized by implementing a rapidly adaptable, replicable, and scalable progressive web application that repurposes jurisdiction-specific cloud infrastructure to address crises across jurisdictions. The Observatory is designed to be highly adaptable for both rapid data collection as well as rapid responses to emerging and existing crises. Data sovereignty and decentralization of technology are core aspects of the observatory, where citizens can own the data they generate, and researchers and decision-makers can re-purpose digital health infrastructure. The ultimate aim of DiScO is to transform health systems by breaking existing jurisdictional silos in addressing global health crises.

    Keywords: big data, citizen science, Cloud computing, Data sovereignty, Digital Health, Health Systems Transformation, Digital platforms, mHealth

    Received: 12 Mar 2024; Accepted: 08 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Katapally. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tarun Katapally, School of Health Studies, DEPtH Lab, Faculty of Health Sciences, Western University, Canada, London, Ontario, Canada

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.