Briefs · Frontier Science
Digital Health for All, or Digital Health for Some?
Health equity cannot be achieved while 1.3 billion people are left outside the screen.
That was the blunt message of a webinar held on 7 April by the World Health Organization and the International Disability Alliance. Around 1.3 billion persons with disabilities, 16 per cent of humanity, still face poorer health and earlier death.
Digital health was supposed to close that gap. Too often it widens the wound instead. Tools built without disabled people in mind stay out of their reach, and old inequalities simply learn new tricks.
The session set out the antidote. It presented the WHO-ITU global standards for accessible telehealth services, with an implementation toolkit to put them into practice.
It also weighed artificial intelligence. AI can open doors, through captioning, voice control, and simpler interfaces. It can also shut them, through algorithmic bias baked into the data.
Experts spoke from the International Disability Alliance, the World Health Organization, the International Telecommunication Union, the World Blind Union, the Republic of India, and the University of Geneva.
Access was part of the point. The session ran in English, with interpretation in Arabic, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, plus captioning and International Sign Language.
This is not a technology debate, but rather a belonging debate. A health system that cannot be used by everyone cannot claim to serve anyone.
Summary in our own words. The original belongs to its publisher.