Chair (2021-2024)
Arriel Benis, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Holon Institute of Technology
Holon, Israel

Co-Chair (2021-2024)
Oscar Tamburis, PhD
Researcher
National Research Council
Naples, Italy

One Digital Health (ODH) is proposed as a unified structure. The One Digital Health “Steering Wheel” conceptual framework is built around (i) two keys (One Health and Digital Health); (ii) three perspectives (Individual Health and well-being, Population and Society, and Ecosystem), and; (iii) five dimensions (Citizen’s engagement, Education, Environment 4.0, Human and Veterinary Healthcare, and Healthcare Industry 4.0).

Citizens and their health data are called to play a central role viewed through an individual and population lens. ODH’s main challenge consists in facilitating and improving the interaction between communities of ‘One Health’ and ‘Digital Health’ for efficient interactions to deliver near-real-time data-driven contributions to systems medicine and systems ecology. Therefore, digital health literacy, capacity to build understanding and engage in health prevention activities, self-management, and collaboration, to prevent, control, and alleviate potential problems, are necessary for systemic ecosystem-driven public health and data science research. To this purpose, a healthy One Digital Health ecosystem must become an active and forceful approach for preventing and managing health crises and disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Benis A, Tamburis O, Chronaki C, Moen A
One Digital Health: A Unified Framework for Future Health Ecosystems
J Med Internet Res 2021;23(2):e22189
URL: https://www.jmir.org/2021/2/e22189
DOI: 10.2196/22189

Focus of Research

  • ODH aims at figuring out and encompassing new research ways, meant to stem from a new kind of collaboration among practitioners in the One Health and Digital Health communities. The integration to be achieved between human, as well as veterinary and environmental data for supporting “predictive, personalized, preventive, participatory (P4)” processes end-to-end will allow both communities to benefit from efficient interactions over time in order to the delivery of near-real- time, data-driven contributions to systems medicine and systems ecology. This will also allow citizens to engage with their individual health and well-being. As a consequence, the need arises as to teaching and training students towards a One Digital Health perspective, in order to establish a systemic and integrated understanding of human and animal health and wellness in their common ecosystem, and how digital systems may support and improve them. To that end, Project-Based Learning (PBL) and Case-Based Learning (CBL) are well-known ways that allow the learners to autonomously develop their skills.
  • The peculiar nature of the topic – and, accordingly, of the WG – will benefit from a strong collaboration with other IMIA working groups, in the light of the enhancement of a multidisciplinary perspective of research, capable of conveying and discussing strategies for increased citizens’ awareness and training for the future generation of health informaticians, in order to build capacity to deal with the new scenarios stemming within the wider One Digital Health panorama.
  • Program of activities near term:
    • Internationalization of the project and its framework (Additionally to contacts in Europe, different ones and potential collaborations exist in South America, and in Australia).
    • Collaborating with other IMIA WGs
    • Running workshops and papers drafting.
    • Submitting grant proposals

“One Digital Health” focuses on the digital transformation of future health ecosystems, bridging a systemic approach of health and life sciences with a broad digital technology perspective to cover human and animal health, with the management of the surrounding environment. This allows examining how next generations of health informaticians can address the intrinsic complexity of novel health and care scenarios in the digitally transformed health ecosystems.

 

Cooperation with other Working groups

The activities of the One Digital Health Working run in collaboration with different existing IMIA Working Groups.

For example, we are currently investigating the ways to lie the ODH concepts with the accident and emergency tracking approaches developed by the Accident & Emergency Informatics – IMIA A&EI WG.

  • Furthermore, as highlighted by the “ODH Steering Wheel” conceptual framework, ODH has five main dimensions of interests. According for investigating and conducting research and training on ODH, collaboration with the other IMIA Working Groups will be run according these five dimensions. Below for each dimensions the potential and expected collaborations, for example:
    • Education
      • Health and Medical Informatics Education WG
      • Student and Emerging Professionals Special Interest Group – IMIA SEP SIG
      • Health Informatics for Development – IMIA HI4D WG
    • Environment
      • Exposome Informatics WG
      • Human Factors Engineering for Healthcare Informatics WG
      • Accident & Emergency Informatics – IMIA A&EI WG
    • Human and Veterinary Healthcare
      • Health Informatics for Patient Safety WG
      • Health Record Banking – IMIA HRB WG
      • Primary Health Care Informatics WG
      • Accident & Emergency Informatics – IMIA A&EI WG
    • Healthcare Industry 4.0
      • Data Mining and Big Data Analytics WG
      • Open Source Health Informatics WG
      • Smart Homes and Ambient Assisted Living WG
      • Standards in Health Care Informatics WG,
      • Technology Assessment & Quality Development in Health Informatics – IMIA TAQD WG
      • Telehealth WG
    • Citizen’s engagement
      • Language and Meaning in BioMedicine – IMIA LaMB WG
      • Organizational and Social Issues WG
      • Participatory Health and Social Media WG
      • Ethics, Privacy and Security in Health Informatics – IMIA EPSHI WG

Annual Reports

June 2022 – June 2023
June 2021 – June 2022 Report