Deep insights on digital transformation in health care

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a digital transformation in health care. Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things are contributing to widespread changes in medicine, as reviewed in a Special Issue on All Things Digital Transformation in the peer-reviewed OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology.

In the editorial titled “All Things Digital Transformation: Health Care, Disinformation, Big Data, and Death,” Vural Özdemir, MD, PhD, DABCP, Editor-in-Chief of OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology, states: “This special issue offers deep insights on the state of the art of digital transformation as well as horizon-scanning in several frontiers of systems science: personalized medicine; data (im)mortality and thanatechnology; digital transformation of health, death and grief in digital society; omics education in the digital era; planetary health genomics and digital twins for pandemic preparedness, and a best practice guidance for innovations in information and communication technologies.”

Dr. Özdemir warns that “digital technologies can spread and repeat disinformation at extremely high speeds, resulting in echo chambers where perceptions and lies prevail over material evidence and truth.”

Featured in the issue is an article by Biaoyang Lin, PhD and Shengjun Wu, MSc from Zhejiang University and the University of Washington School of Medicine, titled “Digital Transformation in Personalized Medicine with Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Medical Things.” The authors describe how the “availability of wearable smart sensors, wireless connectivity, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Medical Things is changing the personalized/precision medicine research and implementation landscape.”

In the article titled “Horizon Scanning: Rise of Planetary Health Genomics and Digital Twins for Pandemic Preparedness,” Marius Geanta, MD, from Centre for Innovation in Medicine, Bucharest, Romania, Angela Brand, MD, PhD, MPH, from Maastricht University, The Netherlands, and coauthors, conclude that “digital transformation in public and private sectors, digital twins/DestinE [a major initiative to develop a digital model of the Earth], and their convergence with omics systems science, are poised to build robust capacities for pandemic preparedness and resilient societies in the 21st century.”

Sehmus Biçer, BA, MA, and Arif Yildirim, PhD, from Canakkale On Sekiz Mart University, Turkey, in the article titled “Digital Death and Thanatechnology: New Ways of Thinking About Data (Im)mortality and Digital Transformation,” examine and call for “new ways of thinking about digital death and thanatechnology [any kind of technology that can be used to deal with death, dying, grief, loss, and illness] as integral dimensions of digital transformation in medicine, new media studies, and society in the 21st century.”

The special issue also features interdisciplinary contributions from Simon Springer, PhD, from University of Newcastle, Discipline of Geography and Environmental Studies, Australia; George P. Patrinos, PhD, from University of Patras, Department of Pharmacy, Greece; Christina Mitropoulou, PhD, MBA, The Golden Helix Foundation, London, U.K.; Sebastian Schee Genannt Halfmann, PhD, United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), The Netherlands, and coauthors.