From counting steps to births and deaths, health and modern technology offer enormous potential to improve public health for people around the world.
United Nations chiefs and business leaders agree that more can be done to strengthen collaboration between the health and information and communications technology (ICT) sectors.
“How can we use information and communications technology to help governments and people make bold choices for health,” said Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, during a special panel session titled Innovation for health – a vision into the future, held during the 9th Global conference on health promotion, on 22 November 2016.
Dr Chan was joined on the panel by Robin Li, the co-founder of Chinese search engine Baidu, United Kingdom Minister for Internet Safety Baroness Joanna Shields, and Houlin Zhao, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
“We have a lot of capabilities that are not well understood by medical professionals, but at the same time I have very little understanding about health professionals’ needs,” said Mr Li, who is also the co-chair of the UN Secretary-General independent advisory group on Data Revolution for Sustainable Development. “I need to know more from the health community about what they need. Magic can happen when both sides come together.”
The importance of accessing and using data for planning health services, the benefits of using communications platforms and tools for exchanging health messages, and the ability for individuals to use modern tools to monitor and improve their physical and mental wellbeing were just several examples mentioned by the panelists.
The Internet is a powerful platform that had enormous potential for sharing messaging to people to promote healthy choices, said Mr Zhao of the ITU, which runs a joint initiative with WHO, be he@lthy be Mobile, that harnesses the power and reach of mobile phones to address risk factors for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol.
Accessing the vast amounts of electronic information, and then using it to monitor and improve the health of populations and individuals, was an area where governments and the technology sector could help make major health gains, said Baroness Shields and Dr Chan.
“Data mining and aggregation is about recognizing patterns of data and using that knowledge to make better decisions, including by governments, to help people be healthier,” explained Baroness Shields.
Dr Chan said she expected that the great potential offered through the exchange information on health and promotion of messaging that encourages healthy behavior would be an issue discussed by Member States at the next World Health Assembly being held in 2017.
“The health sector is one of the most conservative sectors and I would ask Ministers of Health and city mayors, and heads of government and State, to leverage the spread of information and communications technology and global interconnectedness, while putting in place the right tools for good governance to empower people and get the right information,” said Dr Chan.
“People need to look at mHealth (mobile health) as a starting point,” added Dr Chan, who uses a digital wristband to monitor her efforts to meet WHO's physical activity standard of 10,000 steps a day.
The Shanghai event is the ninth held since the inaugural global conference on health promotion staged on Ottawa in 1986. Dr Chan noted that the revolution of ICT was one of the most “amazing innovations” since that first conference.
More than 1,200 people have participated in the Shanghai event, which issued the Shanghai Declaration on Health Promotion, which included a commitment to “prioritize policies that create co-benefits between health and wellbeing and other city policies, making full use of social innovation and interactive technologies.”