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From 3-5 July 2017, the 11th International Digital Health Conference is held in London, hosted by UCL. This year is the first 'independent' year, and therefore exciting to see how this event performs without being embedded in a larger IT conference.
The conference covers a wide spectrum of subjects, including communities of practice and social networks, analytics and engagement with tracking and monitoring wearable devices, big data, public health surveillance, persuasive technologies, epidemic intelligence, participatory surveillance, disaster and emergency medicine, serious games for public health interventions, and automated early identification of health threats and response.
The aim of the conference is to bring together public health agencies (WHO, ECDC, CDC, PHE) and computer science and IT and MedTech industry to cross-fertilize ideas and drive this growing interdisciplinary discipline.
The first day was opened by Oliver Morgan (WHO) with a presentation on the new Health Emergencies structure, and how this links to digital health. In less than one hour, Dr. Morgan gave an impressive overview of the global activities of the WHO in this area, and how IT tools and infrastructure play a vital role. The role of WHO in developing new global digital tools for core functions such as surveillance, early warning, epidemic intelligence and field investigations was very well illustrated.
Other parts of the programme on day 1 included a session on Digital Tools in Practice (which I had the privilege to moderate), poster presentations, a debate session on funding and impact on digital health, parallel sessions on online communities and modeling.
Looking back on Day 1, we see a rich diversity of digital health topics that illustrates how much this field is alive, even though the theme of this year may not have been that obvious in all sessions.
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