Dr Sara Horst Defines Digital Health and Its Benefits for Clinicians, Patients

People have varying definitions of what exactly digital health is, but for Sara Horst MD, MPH, FACG, it encompasses all the technologies that might be used to engage patients in their health. Horst is an associate professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) within the division of gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition. She is also the ambulatory director of VUMC Telehealth and Specialty Pharmacy and associate vice chair of Digital Health Operations of the Department of Medicine.

Transcript

Overall, what do you feel are the benefits of digital health?

Probably the first thing to think about is what is digital health? You know, it's a bit of a newer term. In my standpoint—I think people might have different ideas of exactly what it means—but, for me, digital health is a pretty broad term. To me, it's all technologies that we might use to engage a patient in their health and well-being. So, this could be telehealth, it could be digital therapeutics, or remote patient monitoring, and maybe even things like, you know, artificial intelligence or virtual reality.

I think this is important, because we know patients are increasingly engaging in telehealth in different forms. Just as an example, for telehealth, one report noted that the telehealth market was measuring in the billions of dollars in 2022 and had an expected compound annual growth rate of something like 40% over the next 5 years. So, I don't think this is going away.

One of the things that I think about in my role as a leader in digital health at our institution is to also think about how the clinician interplays with that. For us, a lot of that is the electronic medical record (EMR). So, one of my jobs that I want to think about is, how can we make that more accessible and easier for clinicians to use? I mean, when you think about it, clinicians spend the majority of their time on the computer documenting within the EMR; that can be useful, but it can be really cumbersome and lead to frustration and, you know, “burnout.”

So, I think as clinicians, as clinician leaders, and as hospital systems, we really need to be spending more time thinking about those workflows and trying to make the EMR work for the clinician as well as working for the patient.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.