Local: Remote (ZOOM Session)

We are honoured to welcome Dr Ana Luísa Neves, a prominent figure in family medicine and digital health. She is a Clinical Senior Lecturer in Digital Health and Director of the Global Digital Health Unit (GDHU), a research hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in healthcare.

Digital health is the convergence of digital technologies with health, healthcare, living, and society. This presentation will revisit digital health's potential for delivering higher quality, safer, and more equitable primary care. Focusing on topical examples, we will discuss the emerging opportunities and challenges of digital health, and how they can both challenge and improve safety in primary care. We will also reflect on the need to perform research that adequately evaluates digital interventions: supported by clear outcomes, informed by the six dimensions of quality of care (patient-centredness, efficiency, effectiveness, safety, timeliness, and equity); and focused on defined populations to understand what works, how, and or which patients.

Finally, we will reflect on the need for collaborative approaches to allow digital health to reach its full potential, and the need to improve infrastructure, support, and training for patients and providers. As primary care embraces technology, we must work together to reduce the digital divide, rather than entrench existing inequities for low-income, racial–ethnic minority and linguistically diverse populations. Digital health will only achieve its full potential once it remains true to the core values of our speciality and leaves no one behind.

Join us and let's promote debate and collaboration in science!