About the Journal

Journal Readership

Digital Health inherently relies on various distinct disciplines, bringing together researchers with a background including but not limited to health informatics and data science, artificial intelligence, health communication science, public health science, implementation science, and medical and health psychology.

 

Aims & Scope

The European Journal of Digital Health (EJDH) publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed research that addresses digital innovations in health from a theoretical, methodological and/or applied perspective. The design and empirical evaluation of new digital technologies as well as their implementation in actual practice are of great interest for the journal. Moreover, we also welcome discussions of the ethical, legal and societal aspects (ELSA) of Digital Health innovations.

We follow the characterization of Digital Health, sometimes also referred to as eHealth, as formulated by the European Union as “a set of tools and services that use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support and improve all stages of healthcare, from prevention and diagnosis to treatment, monitoring, and management of health condition”.  Accordingly, we take a broad perspective on health, not just as the reduction or absence of disease, but also the presence of wellbeing.

Examples of relevant tools and services are patient portals and electronic health records (EHRs), virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), smartphone-based applications (mHealth), social media, wearable devices and biosensors, AI-driven health tools (such as large language models (LLMs) and chatbots), digital phenotyping, telemedicine platforms, and (social) robots. 

Digital Health plays an important role in many countries in Europe and elsewhere. It holds great promise in preventive and pre-clinical settings, for example through persuasive digital tools that may encourage healthy behaviours such as healthy eating, physical activity, smoking cessation, and more, relying on behaviour change techniques. Also in the clinical setting Digital Health offers major promises, for both patients and clinicians. Patients can be supported, for example, by improving access to care through remote consultations and by enabling better health management through wearables and apps, allowing people to monitor and manage their own health and wellbeing. By the same token Digital Health can support healthcare professionals with their work, for example, by making patient data more readily accessible to inform shared decision-making, by streamlining workflows and reducing administrative burden, and enhancing communication with patients as well as other caregivers.

Nevertheless, despite these promises practical implementation of Digital Health is not always straightforward, and implementation may be accompanied by unintended adverse consequences. Moreover, making sure that Digital Health innovations are beneficial for all and do not contribute to a widening digital divide has proven to be challenging.

The European Journal of Digital Health aims to contribute to the scientific study of Digital Health through a multidisciplinary and multi-method approach. Digital Health inherently relies on various distinct disciplines, bringing together researchers with backgrounds including but not limited to health informatics and data science, artificial intelligence, health communication science, public health science, implementation science, and medical and health psychology.

The European Journal of Digital Health is a sister journal of the European Journal of Health Communication.