In healthcare, there’s always a road to cross.
By now, I’m sure we’ve all heard about the positive and effective impacts of digital health and the innovative tools and technologies that enable successful healthcare delivery. These tools, when used correctly, can strengthen health systems, assist employers in improving employee morale while reducing burnout, and can help other entities such as government systems deploy resources to their citizens that strengthen the community’s overall health and wellness. Digital health tools have proven to produce remarkable outcomes, especially when used to complement routine visits with healthcare providers, as intended.
Digital health tools provide opportunities to transform gender inequities in the healthcare system, as well as for other populations facing insufficient health treatment. But what is the most significant opportunity? Additionally, why is it so important to women in particular? First, we must start to look at the problem we need to solve.
Women of all ages in low-income neighborhoods and countries are less likely to own digital technologies than their male counterparts, so it is no surprise that women lack control over their individual potential to engage in digital health and digital health products that could increase their overall well-being. This disproportionate ownership demonstrates or reinforces a key theme—access.
Unfortunately, the full potential of digital health remains hindered due to overall accessibility and the lack of support or championing from stakeholders, including employers and communities. That’s in addition to the programs and policies in place to sustain a strong digital health foundation for all women, despite their economic circumstances and background.
Although the obstacles of accessibility and stakeholder buy-in exist in ensuring women have access, we still have the potential to not only transform women’s health but also improve gender equity in the U.S. As a 2022 article from Anthem says, digital health improves women’s overall decision-making, social status, communication with their partners and, most importantly and repeatedly, access to resources.
Our responsibility is to ensure our health system works for everyone, including women. Although we must still find solutions that actively put mobile devices, computers and other digital resources in the hands of women across the globe, there are several steps we can take to move toward positive gender relations.
First, health application developers must ensure their tools provide safety and privacy, efficacy and accessibility to guarantee that women and other underprivileged groups have adequate access. This can be done by application going through the Digital Health Assessment Framework, a U.S. system for assessing digital health technologies, including mobile apps and web-based tools used by healthcare providers and consumers. Second, organizations, government systems, employers and healthcare providers have the ability to administer curated libraries of these assessed digital tools to certain populations such as mental health libraries specifically for women, based on their specific needs.
Understanding the connection between women and digital health allows us to support partnerships and synergies, forces us to stop exacerbating gender inequalities and provides solutions to ensure women are no longer left behind in the digital health revolution. We, as healthcare professionals, just have to create the intersection to do so.
Samantha E. Elder is U.S. vice president of marketing and communication, ORCHA.