Digital Health Research
The Future of Health as envisioned by the World Health Organization and Deloitte calls for an immediate start of a transformation of the current reactive primary care system (a point-of-care paradigm) into a proactive Health Navigator – a continuum-of-care paradigm capable of providing continuous health monitoring for the masses while personalizing just-in-time guidance and interventions to the individuals. It is envisioned that such continuum-of-care can be realized by availing real-time, individual- and population-level health data and information to the citizens, the healthcare and social care delivery systems, and policy makers. This will completely transform the healthcare delivery role from treating diseases and illnesses to primarily keeping individuals healthy and health-navigated at all times, radically reducing illness incidents and associated non-sustainable cost and staffing burden. This will also change the level of readiness and the ability to swiftly respond to health emergencies such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Prof. Helal and his students and colleagues have set a Digital Health research agenda to contribute to enabling such urgently needed changes and transformations.
Enabling the Personal-to-Population Health Continuum
Continuously monitoring and modeling personal and population health is a fundamental ingredient in the forthcoming transformation of public health services. Having accurate and timely information about the citizens’ health is not only important for ensuring the health of the public, but also to inform health policies, assist in care delivery logistical planning and detecting localized issues. We focus on two research projects to enable the personal-to-population health continuum: