Journal Article

Digital technologies in the public-health response to COVID-19

McKendry, Rachel A., Edelstein, Michael, Manley, Ed, Lampos, Vasileios, Zhuang, Mengdie, Short, Michael J., Emery, Vincent C., Johnson, Anne M., Manning, Erin M., Miller, Benjamin S., Heymann, David, Keegan, Neil, Pillay, Deenan, Budd, Jobie, Rees, Geraint, Cox, Ingemar J., Stevens, Molly M.

2020

Overview

Digital technologies are being harnessed to support the public-health response to COVID-19 worldwide, including population surveillance, case identification, contact tracing and evaluation of interventions on the basis of mobility data and communication with the public. These rapid responses leverage billions of mobile phones, large online datasets, connected devices, relatively low-cost computing resources and advances in machine learning and natural language processing. This Review aims to capture the breadth of digital innovations for the public-health response to COVID-19 worldwide and their limitations, and barriers to their implementation, including legal, ethical and privacy barriers, as well as organizational and workforce barriers. The future of public health is likely to become increasingly digital, and we review the need for the alignment of international strategies for the regulation, evaluation and use of digital technologies to strengthen pandemic management, and future preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an accelerated development of applications for digital health, including symptom monitoring and contact tracing. Their potential is wide ranging and must be integrated into conventional approaches to public health for best effect.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group US,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 692/699/255/2514 / 692/700 / Account aggregation / Betacoronavirus - pathogenicity / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Biomedicine / Cancer Research / Cellular telephones / Communication / Contact potentials / Contact tracing / Control / Coronavirus Infections - epidemiology / Coronavirus Infections - prevention & control / Coronavirus Infections - virology / Coronaviruses / COVID-19 / Crowdsourcing / Data collection / Digital health / Digital technology / Disease transmission / Epidemics / Health aspects / Health surveillance / Humans / Identification / Infectious Diseases / Information technology / Laboratories / Learning algorithms / Machine Learning / Metabolic Diseases / Methods / Molecular Medicine / Natural Language Processing / Neurosciences / Pandemics / Pandemics - prevention & control / Pandemics - statistics & numerical data / Patient monitoring / Pneumonia, Viral - epidemiology / Pneumonia, Viral - prevention & control / Pneumonia, Viral - virology / Population Surveillance / Privacy / Public health / Public Health - statistics & numerical data / Public health administration / Review Article / SARS-CoV-2 / Smartphones / Social networks / Technology application / Visualization