Future Digital Health Crisis Management and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Introduction

The spread of COVID-19 has been challenging the world since late 2019, when it was first detected in Wuhan, China, resulting in a global pandemic and worldwide lockdowns, caused a paradigm shift in how world leaders and health systems manage public health risks [1]. Even though countries all over the world faced the same transboundary crisis which effortlessly exceeded geographical, policy, cultural, public-private, and legal boundaries [2], the country-specific impact and response to the crisis varied, leaving the best and the worst of national and international leadership was exposed. The world and research shifted toward new digital technologies used in crisis management process. The implications of digital health crisis management are crucial for the creation of a critical, relevant, and ethical cross-cultural management practice that may help with new real-world problems in the future [2].

This research consists of two parts. Firstly, the following research questions are explored via a systematic literature review of the relevant journal articles: 1) How can digital tools be used in improving digital public health crisis management? 2) What are the existing challenges of digital health management? Secondly, a survey of citizens of Vienna is going to be conducted to provide insight into perception of locals regarding digital health crisis management of COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

An integrated literature review will be completed with the goal of offering new findings based on the gathered literature. To ensure replicability, we searched for relevant peer reviewed research and journal articles written in English, published in 2020 and 2021, searching for three phrases: 1) covid crisis management, 2) covid digital health, and 3) covid digital technology, in each of the 11 databases visited. For each search, 10 most relevant sources were added to Zotero, if that many were available. Out of 315 gathered reports, 116 were selected for review, using an online screening tool, Covidence, following the PRISMA protocol. Qualitative analysis is being performed using QDA miner to code the relevant text.

Expected Results

We expect to offer new finding on digital tools (mHealth, eHealth, etc.) used in crisis management and their known challenges, the results of which will be used as guidelines to make and conduct a survey researching the population with the goal of improving and creating a holistic human-centric model for digital health crisis management.

References

[1] B. Anthony Jnr., “Use of Telemedicine and Virtual Care for Remote Treatment in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic,” Journal of Medical Systems, vol. 44, no. 7, Jun. 2020, doi: 10.1007/s10916-020-01596-5.

[2] G. Bajaj, S. Khandelwal, and P. Budhwar, “COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of cross-cultural differences on crisis management: A conceptual model of transcultural crisis management,” International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, no. 3, p. 147059582110601, Nov. 2021, doi: 10.1177/14705958211060189.