Digital Health: Reimagining Healthcare Potential With Patient Partners
As an intergenerational sandwich caregiver and patient, blue-sky thinking has become paramount when exploring what meaningful, high-quality, evidence-based care might mean for my household. Honouring everyone’s intersectionality is challenging despite my best efforts to balance the unique needs of my loved ones and myself. Experiencing health care along my family’s vast life span continuum has compelled me to critically reflect on the capacity of digital health to influence health equity.
In my role as a patient partner, I have engaged in various spaces within different organizations and institutions. Sharing my family’s experiences, as well as my own, of healthcare across different settings has been a healing and affirming way to create small ripples of change. I am keenly aware of the convoluted dynamics that exist in healthcare and do not take the opportunity, when invited, to share my perspectives lightly or for granted. However, in moments when I have witnessed individuals with diverse perspectives, knowledge, and experiences collaborating intentionally to metamorphose healthcare, I have been inspired by how the fruits of this toil have transformed care experiences, especially when outdated practices have created challenges and sometimes consequential barriers.
For e-Health I’m excited about the growing opportunities for patients, families, and caregivers to participate and actively shape the future of healthcare. In my humble opinion, the potential to meaningfully partner on digital care can ground “the work” with the intention and purpose of those it is intended to impact. Partnerships are anchored in the conceptualization of standardizing healthcare; creating contemporaneous, usable, evidence-based health data; implementing tools to address systemic inequities; and enhancing innovation for digital health and digital health education, among others. As we move toward reimagining the potential of healthcare through data and digital innovation, we must collaborate with patient and caregiver partners to forge meaningful paths forward for meaningful healthcare impact.
Alifa Khan, e-Health25 Patient Partner and Opening Ceremonies Emcee
Learn more about the e-Health25 Patient Partners here.
