Overcoming Barriers in Digital Health Implementation: Six Strategies for Success

Digital health technologies, including mobile apps, sensors, and artificial intelligence solutions, have shown promising results in managing lifestyle interventions and chronic diseases such as cardiovascular conditions and type 2 diabetes. Despite these encouraging outcomes, a significant gap remains between research and real-world application, with many digital tools remaining confined to the research phase and not being adopted into routine healthcare practice.

Marie Löf, a Professor of Nutrition at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet, emphasizes the frustration within the healthcare community. She highlights that considerable effort is invested in developing and testing digital health solutions, yet they often fail to reach the patients who could benefit most.

In a recent correspondence published in ture Medicine, Löf and Ralph Maddison, a Foreign Adjunct Professor at MedH, outline six key recommendations aimed at bridging this gap. The strategies focus on early planning for implementation, considering sustainable business models, and designing tools that are accessible to diverse populations, regardless of language or literacy levels.

These insights are intended to guide researchers both nationally and internationally, fostering the integration of digital health solutions into standard healthcare practices to improve patient outcomes. Currently, the authors are working on developing and testing a multilingual platform dedicated to self-care in gestational diabetes, applying these guidelines to facilitate successful deployment.

The article underscores the importance of deliberate planning and inclusivity in digital health development to make these innovative tools a practical part of everyday clinical workflows.

For further details, refer to the original publication: Marie Löf et al, Implementing digital health to support self-care of chronic diseases, ture Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-025-03729-0.

Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-05-digital-health-tools-stuck-article.html