This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the role of Digital Health technologies in Primary Care. Discussing the transformative potential of Digital Health solutions and their impact on healthcare delivery within the Primary Care setting, the book offers insights, considers strategies, and shares practical guidance for all Primary Care providers interested in leveraging digital innovations to enhance patient outcomes and optimise care delivery.
Key Features:
Content specific to and tailored for primary care and family medicine
Provides expert opinion and thought leadership on key enablers and hindrances of digital technology within health care systems
Includes concepts of patient and provider co-design of ideal systems and real-world examples of successful integrations of technologies into patient-centred models of care
Delivers the essential knowledge for practitioners and policy makers to develop and implement digital health innovation and service redesign
Through structured description of the spectrum of existing digital innovations, all applicable within and relevant to Primary Care, this timely new guide will support clinicians, innovators, and policy makers to maximise the opportunities and challenges that these technologies present. This guide will also enable future doctors, whatever their career aspirations, to understand the importance of digital innovation and its applications in health systems and patient-centred care.
About the Editors:
Ana Luisa Neves MD PhD, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Digital Health, Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College, London, UK; Chair of the WONCA Working Party on eHealth
Lilliana Laranjo MD MPH PhD, Associate Professor, Westmead Applied Research Centre, Sydney Medical School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Australia; Deputy Chair of the WONCA Working Party on eHealth.
Foreword
Chapter 1 Understanding Digital Health in Primary Care
Chai Carol Chan, Jako Burgers, Pramendra Prasad, Mehmet Ungan, Karen Kinder,
Azeem Majeed and Ana Luisa Neves
Chapter 2 Digital Health Tools for Clinical Practice
Edmond Li, Olivia Lounsbury, Bernardo Sousa-Pinto, Unben Pillay, Avivit Golan
Cohen and Shlomo Vinker
Chapter 3 The Role of Digital Health in Patient-Centered Care
Keith Thompson, Hüsna Sarca Çevik, Hans Eguia, Bridget L. Ryan, Moira
Stewart and Tom Freeman
Chapter 4 Improving Clinical Effectiveness Through Digital Interventions
Nana Kwame Ayisi-Boateng, Eric Kojo Nsa Oduro, Obed Kwabena Offe Amponsah,
Douglas Aninng Opoku, Jacopo Demurtas and Benedict Hayhoe
Chapter 5 Safety and Unintended Consequences
Ulrik Bak Kirk, Rebecca Payne, Ana Ferreira, Andree Rochfort and Nancy
Matillya
Chapter 6 Equity and Digital Divide
Steven van de Vijver, Paulien Tensen, Raquel Gómez Bravo, Francisca Gaifém,
Pratyush Kumar and Mercy Wanjala
Chapter 7 User-Centred Design and User Experiences with Digital Health
Geva Greenfield, Ana Rita Luz, Boon How Chew, Kam Cheong Wong and Cristina
Jácome
Chapter 8 Implementing Digital Health Solutions in Primary Care
Geronimo Jimenez, Marise Kasteleyn, Niels Chavannes, Raluca Zoianu, Ahmed
Alboksmaty
Chapter 9 Digital Health Sustainability and Systems Thinking Approaches
Nick Guldemond, Melita Sogomonjan and Mariam Beridze
Chapter 10 Conclusion: Transforming Primary Care Through Digital Health
Liliana Laranjo, Sara Ares-Blanco, Amanda Howe, Sankha Randenikumara and
Donald Li
Index
Ana Luisa Neves (MD, MSc, PhD) is a Associate Professor in Digital Health at Imperial College London. Dr Neves is a practicing GP, and currently holds roles as Chair of the Working Party on eHealth of WONCA World and Vice-Chair of the European General Practice Research Network. At Imperial, Dr Ana Luisa Neves is Director of the Global Digital Health, leads the Digital Health Theme at the Northwest London NIHR Applied Research Collaboration, and is Co-Lead for the Theme New service delivery models at the Northwest London NIHR Patient Safety Research Centre. She also holds a position as Associate Professor at University of Porto. She coordinates multidisciplinary research teams focusing on the design, implementation and evaluation of digital technologies to deliver safer, more effective, and patientcentred care.
Dr. Neves has a Master of Science from University of Porto (Portugal) and a PhD in Clinical Medicine from Imperial College London (UK). During her PhD, she received a PhD studentship from the GABBA Program (Graduate Program in Areas of Basic and Applied Biology), a international PhD program funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. In 2018, Dr. Neves was awarded a WONCA Scholarship, followed by an Athena SWAN Award for Excellence at Imperial College London in 2019. She completed the Global Health Leaders Program at Harvard University in 20222023. Dr Neves was appointed as a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (20242025), as part of her International Fellowship at Ariadne Labs. Dr Neves has more than 6,500 citations, with a h-index=32.
Liliana Laranjo (MD, MPH, PhD) is an Associate Professor at Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, where she holds a Sydney Horizon Fellowship. She has a background as a General Practitioner and is Deputy Chair of the World Organization of General Practitioners (WONCA) eHealth Working Party, as well as Member of the founding International Advisory Board for The Lancet Primary Care. Dr. Laranjo leads the Digital Health Stream at the Westmead Applied Research Centre, an Impact Centre of the University of Sydney, where she coordinates several clinical trials and leads multidisciplinary teams across different fields, from medicine and health to data science and engineering. Her research focuses on leveraging Digital Health to empower and support patients in their health journeys, with the aim of preventing chronic disease at scale in the community.
Dr. Laranjo has a Master of Public Health from Harvard University and a PhD in Medicine (Digital Health) from Lisbon Medical School, Portugal. During her PhD, she received a Junior Clinical Research Award from the Harvard Medical School-Portugal Program. She was a 2022 World Heart Federation Emerging Leader and has been awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council Emerging Leader Investigator Grant (20232027) and an Honorary Future Leader Fellowship from the National Heart Foundation (20232026) in Australia. Dr. Laranjos work has received global media attention and has been used to guide research, practice, and policy worldwide. Her field-weighted citation index is 2, meaning her overall number of citations is double the world average in the field.
