Working on Europe Academy: Digital health tools

Session 3: The societal readiness to adopt digital health tools: the myths we tell ourselves and the people that should not be left behind

Lecturer: Dr Robin van Kessel

This lecture’s core topic revolves around how COVID-19 has changed the healthcare landscape to better accommodate digital health practices. However, have these changes remained? Were they implemented in a way that allowed them to continue to exist or were they simply a temporary solution? This lecture will explore some of the applications of digital health tools we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic thus far and some that are in development. Furthermore, it will explore avenues where digital health may be applicable in the future. It will then transition to an analysis of how digital health-seeking behaviour has changed over the course of the pandemic and end with some takeaways on how to ensure that digital health does not become the exclusive domain of those who are more naturally more digitally inclined than others.

Pre-attendance materials:

– van Kessel, R., Kyriopoulos, I., Wong, B.L.H., & Mossialos, E. (2022) Has the pandemic enhanced and sustained digital health-seeking behaviour? A big-data interrupted time-series analysis of Google Trends [Preprint].

– van Kessel, R., Wong, B.L.H., Rubinić, I., O’Nuallain, E., & Czabanowska, K. (2022). Is Europe prepared to go digital? Making the case for developing digital capacity: An exploratory analysis of Eurostat survey data. PLoS Digital Health, 1(2): e0000013. 

– Wong, B.L.H., Maaß, L., Vodden, A., van Kessel, R., Sorbello, S., Buttigieg, S., & Odone, A. (2022). The dawn of digital public health in Europe: Implications for public health policy and practice. The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 14: 100316.

– van Kessel, R., Hrzic, R., O’Nuallain, E., Weir, E., Wong, B.L.H., Anderson, M., Baron-Cohen, S., & Mossialos, E. (2022). Digital health paradox: international policy perspectives to address the increased health inequalities for people living with disabilities. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(2): e33819.

Specific Learning Outcomes:

– Understand the array of application of digital health.

– Understand how ready Europe currently is to adopt digital health structurally.

– Explore different options to improve the readiness and willingness to adopt digital health in Europe while not leaving behind vulnerable people.

Dr Robin van Kessel holds a PhD in comparative health policy with a focus on autism and inclusive education policy in the European Union. After his PhD, he joined Maastricht University as an assistant professor, where he started developing his research portfolio in digital health and expanded his skills in quantitative analysis and health economics. He also functioned as voluntary interim project manager for the WHO Global Health Workforce Network Youth Hub and joined the European Patients’ Forum as an adviser for the Gravitate Health project. Currently, van Kessel is affiliated with the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he performs research and consultancy tasks, as well as supervises PhD students in collaboration with both LSE and Maastricht University.

* After attending this lecture students will receive a Certificate of Attendance upon request