Digital health education: Critical perspectives

Abstract

Digital technologies are an integral part of healthcare used by a growing number of healthcare professionals, organisations, patients, communities and other stakeholders. Digital health is the broad term used to capture a range of digital devices, platforms and the different ways in which they are used for health purposes. Examples include, but are not limited to, health-related apps, wesbites, online communities, wearable devices, virtual care, online/electronic medical records and, more recently, various forms of extended reality. These continue to develop at a rapid pace and their design, implementation, use and evaluation are the subject of an established body of research.The increasing trend towards digitation of health systems poses new challenges and opportunities. With advances in digital health, there has been an accompanying discourse of optimism and hope about what these developments might offer. 'Instrumental' and 'solutionist' approaches (Lupton, 2014) to digital health have emerged, articulating the potential for these technologies to address wicked problems and associated health concerns in an increasingly globalised society. Attention has turned towards examining how digital innovations might help mitigate the effects of contemporary threats to health including war, climate change, pandemics, epidemics, cost of living crisis and other factors which exacerbate enduring health inequalities. Moreover, alongside the focus on prevention, health authorities have recently emphasised a 'paradigm of preparedness' (David and Le Dévédec, 2019) focusing on the need to better respond to the disasters and crises brought about by global threats (e.g. further 'waves' of pandemics). Amid such uncertainty, exploring the potential of digital technologies to advance health education and health practices remains salient and has received attention internationally in both policy and academic contexts. Moreover, there are a growing number of journal special issues critically examining the role of digital technologies in transforming healthcare delivery and experience.Building on this work, the purpose of this special issue of Health Education Journal (HEJ) is to reflect on critical questions of education concerned with the nature of the relationship between these processes of digitisation and pedagogy -what and how people are learning through digital