title: Creating a pandemic of health: What is the role of digital technologies?
abstract: Imagine a world in which every human being is healthy until the last breath. Thanks to the fast penetration of digital technologies in every region of the planet, this seemingly utopian scenario is not only feasible but also potentially viable. Now that digital technologies have provided almost full interconnectivity among all humans, they should be used to meet key challenges to ensure that health is created and that it spreads to reach every person on earth. The objective of this article is to describe and trigger a serious discussion of such challenges, which include: adopting a new concept of health; positioning self-rated health as the main outcome of the system; creating a health-oriented model to guide service provision; facilitating the identification, scaling up, and sustaining of innovations that can create and spread health; promoting a culture of health promotion; and encouraging the emergence of Precision Health. Once these challenges are met, and health becomes pandemic, public health would have fulfilled its vision, a healthy life for all, at last.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Global Health Equity and Innovation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, 155 College Street, Toronto, ON, M5T 3M7, Canada. a.jadad@utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Alejandro R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Jadad
mesh_terms: D020811:Biomedical Technology; D000069576:Health Equity; D006293:Health Promotion; D006296:Health Services / Q000592:standards; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008490:Medical Informatics; D057285:Precision Medicine
keywords: digital technologies; global health; innovation; pandemic; public health; social contagion; transformation