Special Commentary: Living Through the Potentials of “Digital Health Care” in the Current Crisis

Abstract

The systematized application of digital health has the potential to become the great equalizer in our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Health care administrators and clinical leaders are at the confluence and convergence of decades of collaboration between information technology, health care operations, and care delivery teams in the aim of stemming the tide of this virus.  In the United States, the legislative and administrative groundwork laid in HIPPA, the ACA, and even as recently as the Interoperability and Patient Access final rule provided the guide rails, while COVID-19 provided the catalyst.  The pandemic has activated a number of mechanisms that had previously only been theorized in academic literature and debated in health system board rooms.