Leveraging the Use of Technology Transformation to Advance the Health of Persons with Chronic Illness

Dear Colleagues,

Chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes are prevalent, costly to cure, and difficult to care for, causing profound psychological impacts on patients and caregivers and driving rising healthcare costs. Despite innovative strides made in care delivery models for chronically ill patients, the quality of care has been significantly challenged by a number of prolonged issues such as limited provider involvement due to financial costs in care provision, the lack of/limited care coordination among care providers, fragmented transition from acute care to long-term care, fraught patient experience, and inadequate attention to/capacity for personalized care. These challenges are further exacerbated by the growing aging population and painfully accentuated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Wearable smart devices, Internet of Things (IoT), AI technologies, robots such as drones, big data analytics, and machine learning technologies hold a key to affordable, customizable, and scalable solutions to these challenges. These technologies have been employed in industries such as finance, retail, and travel to improve new product development, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction. While digital technologies have forayed into health care, they could be leveraged to catalyze the transformation of the health of a person with a chronic illness by enabling patient-centered care, empowering evidence-based timely decisions and care provisions, facilitating efficient and effective coordination among care providers, and stimulating innovative interventions, prevention and control. In addition, the extant research sheds light on the vital role of co-creation in online healthcare communities (OHCs) as nascent peer-to-peer co-creation platforms in public health and wellbeing.  This Special Issue is dedicated to original research that offers insights into digital technology solutions and their transformative impact on the health of a person with a chronic illness.

Prof. Dr. Linying Dong
Prof. Dr. Farid Shirazi
Guest Editors

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• chronic diseases
• digital technologies
• innovations
• patient-centered care
• disease intervention
• prevention and control
• care coordination
• care personalization
• online healthcare