New mHealth Group Targets Data Security, Tackling the Digital Divide

The Digital Medicine Society has launched a new collaborative aimed at developing best practices for measuring health through mHealth platforms.

The Digital Health Measurement Collaborative Community (DATAcc), which currently comprises 27 members, “will use interdisciplinary expertise, data, and use cases to develop and demonstrate best practices and advance harmonized approaches to speed the use of digital health measurement to improve health outcomes, health economics, and health equity.”

The group defines digital health as the use of digital technologies to collect clinical and other data from people outside the traditional health setting. That data is used by clinicians for care management and health and wellness coaching, and by individuals who want to take more control of their health. It’s also increasingly being used by researchers, including those in the pharmaceutical industry.

Group members say the connected health industry is at a crossroads, facing pressure by the rapid adoption of telehealth and mHealth during the coronavirus pandemic to develop standards that guide providers, preserve health data privacy and support measures to breach the digital divide.

The challenge, in part, lies in trying to create guidelines at a time when everyone seems to be using the technology. Many of the rules surrounding connected health were relaxed by federal and state lawmakers to speed up adoption during the pandemic, and there’s no clear consensus on how to create long-term policy.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has permanently changed, and in many ways positively so, how we deliver healthcare, conduct health research, and view the role of individuals in managing their health,” DiMe Executive Director Jennifer Goldsack said in a May press release announcing the new group. “However, the pandemic has also made starkly apparent the urgent need to address disparities in health outcomes and health determinants. DATAcc provides a forum for collaboration to mature and democratize digital health measurement as a powerful new tool to improve the health and lives of every person regardless of their race, income, social status, or geographic location.”

DATAcc includes a broad mixture of digital health vendors, organizations like the American Telemedicine Association, AdvaMed, the Connected Health Initiative and the Consumer Technology Association, and health systems or affiliated teaching institutions like Johns Hopkins Medicine, the University of Rochester Medical Center, the University of Louisville and Duke University.

In addition, the group includes representatives from the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health and the Health and Human Services Department’s Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center.

“It is important to empower stakeholders to ensure equitable access to high quality, safe, and effective digital health technologies,” Anindita Saha, Assistant Director of the Digital Health Center of Excellence in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health and the organization’s liaison to DATAcc, said in the press release. “DATAcc can advance efforts to build the science and evidence generation for all people by keeping health outcomes and health equity front and center.” 

DiMe, which launched two years ago in Boston, has been busy launching and supporting connected health issues. In January, the group partnered with the ATA to launch the IMPACT (vIrtual-first Medical PrActice CollaboraTion) initiative, which aims to develop guidelines for care providers who are steering clear of in-person services and promoting a “virtual first” strategy.