gms | German Medical Science

Background: The increase in digital solutions in the healthcare sector has progressed further, not only recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has kept public health systems busy around the world, with digital trackers and monitoring systems being used to monitor the pandemic alongside vaccination campaigns. The field of application and research of digital public health thus increasingly came to the fore.(1) However, digital solutions are also becoming increasingly important for public health outside of the pandemic. Regulated and unregulated interventions are appearing on the market in this area, as leisure and wellness services such as health watches and fitness trackers have long been part of everyday life in society. It is unclear whether these innovations contribute to health prevention or health promotion.(2) Leading evaluation structures such as the Health Technology Assessment are reaching their limits in assessing digital health technologies and can no longer ensure evidence-based proof; in addition, public health interventions require a broader view that increasingly incorporates social, cultural, and country-specific contexts.(3) Underinvested and low-resourced settings (LRSs) are particularly affected by this. In these circumstances, there is a risk that new technologies can exacerbate the health inequality caused by the digital divide.(4) This study aims to shed light on existing frameworks for the assessment of digital public health interventions (DPHI) and how these should be adapted in the context of low-resourced settings.

Method: The methodology used was a scoping review according to JBI guidelines(5). Three databases with different search strings were searched. The first search included the identification of assessment frameworks which could be applied to DPHI. In the second part recommendations for the assessment of digital public health interventions in LRSs was conducted.

Results: Only one hit was recorded specifically for existing digital public health assessment framework, so holistic frameworks for evaluating digital health interventions were also included in the scoping review. As a result, four additional results were included. In case of the specific requirements of DPHI assessment in LRSs. The dominant domains which have been considered were the user and stakeholder involvement, the infrastructure and technical functionality, cooperation between government and providers and sustainable financing.

Conclusion: Overall, it was found that there is a gap in the assessment of DPHI in LRS as the existing frameworks are either not yet sufficiently validated for their usefulness or the assessment criteria used are inadequate.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

The authors declare that an ethics committee vote is not required.