About this Research Topic

Background

Digital technologies are leading the transformation of the healthcare sector and are bringing new models of health service delivery that are mostly focused on prevention and based on personalization and precision. In particular, precision healthcare is a concept describing a data-driven transformation of health systems which, similarly to precision medicine, facilitates improved targeting of healthcare services for the purpose of maximising their effectiveness and relevance. Precision healthcare aims to propose appropriate, targeted interventions in health systems to enable universal health coverage, customized patient outcomes, optimized management of resources.

The digitalization for precision healthcare implies the development of novel, targeted approaches with a focus on data-centric, smart healthcare models to address the current complexity of the healthcare ecosystem. It involves big data platforms and analytics for different goals such as: to assist health systems respond to specific health demands; to design healthcare services for scalability according to the growth of populations; to target public health surveillance to promptly control epidemic-related emergencies. It includes predictive algorithms to differentiate patient communities by risk and inform individual decision making, as well as digital tools to track healthcare charges and costs, as well as the level of peoples’ engagement.

The goal of this special issue is to collect strategies, models and evidence concerning the use of data-driven approaches, digital tools and infrastructures which enable precision healthcare. We are particularly interested in the precision of delivering healthcare services according to population needs, managing risk related to healthcare practices, facing challenges of health systems according to demographic, nosographic and socio-economic changes. The contributions can be focused on governments, providers, industries, payers and populations that consider the digital empowerment of health systems to answer key health priorities and realize advanced and wide healthcare delivery. We encourage authors to explore digitalization for precision healthcare in existing practices and provide evidence to support whether it is an improvement in health outcomes and delivery of services. However, this research topic welcomes papers that provide both theoretical and empirical findings.

Examples of topics (include but are not limited to):

• Innovative digital tools and platforms to improve access to healthcare services, the prevention of chronic illnesses, the self-management of medical conditions, the patient’s education and engagement for health improvement
• Health systems’ governance models to improve healthcare delivery and preparedness of health systems
• Evaluation and impact assessment techniques of the digitalization for precision healthcare on patients, caregivers, providers and health systems
• Studies on management, financing, designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining the sustainability of innovative models of digitalization for precision healthcare
• Models and schemes based on digitalization for precision healthcare that can be scaled up to respond to crisis situations, such a pandemic
• Analyses of opportunities and controversies related to digitalization for health system transformation towards precision healthcare

Keywords: digital transformation, data-driven models, healthcare innovation, digital impact assessment, digital impact

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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