Bridging the Digital Divide in Healthcare—from Access to Equity

Dear Colleagues,

Digital technologies are reshaping healthcare systems worldwide. Telemedicine, mobile health applications, artificial intelligence, wearable devices, electronic health records, and remote monitoring tools are increasingly transforming how health services are delivered, accessed, and managed. While these innovations offer great potential to improve efficiency, continuity of care, and patient engagement, they also risk reproducing or even deepening existing health inequalities if access, usability, affordability, and digital literacy are unevenly distributed across populations.

This Special Issue, entitled "Bridging the Digital Divide in Healthcare—from Access to Equity," aims to move beyond a narrow understanding of the digital divide as merely a matter of technological access. Instead, it emphasizes a broader equity-oriented perspective, focusing on how digital health resources can be fairly distributed, effectively used, and meaningfully integrated into healthcare systems to benefit all groups, especially marginalized and underserved populations.

The digital divide in healthcare is shaped by multiple and intersecting factors, including socioeconomic status, geographic location, age, education, disability, ethnicity, cultural background, health literacy, and institutional capacity. Individuals and communities facing social or economic disadvantage may have limited access to digital infrastructure, insufficient digital skills, lower trust in digital health services, or fewer opportunities to benefit from technology-enabled care. As a result, digital health innovations may unintentionally widen disparities in healthcare utilization, quality of care, patient experience, and health outcomes.

This Special Issue seeks to provide a platform for interdisciplinary research that examines the causes, mechanisms, consequences, and solutions related to the digital divide in healthcare. We welcome empirical, theoretical, methodological, and policy-oriented contributions that explore how digital health can be designed, implemented, governed, and evaluated in ways that promote health equity. Particular attention will be given to studies that move from identifying inequalities in access toward proposing practical pathways for inclusive and equitable digital healthcare systems.

Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Digital access, affordability, and infrastructure gaps in healthcare;
• Digital literacy, health literacy, and patient engagement in digital health;
• Inequalities in telemedicine use and remote healthcare delivery;
• The impact of digital health technologies on healthcare quality and outcomes;
• Digital exclusion among older adults, rural residents, low-income groups, people with disabilities, and other underserved populations;
• Equity implications of artificial intelligence, big data, and algorithmic decision-making in healthcare;
• Trust, privacy, ethics, and patient rights in digital healthcare;
• Inclusive design and user-centered digital health interventions;
• Policy, governance, and regulatory strategies for reducing digital health inequalities;
• Comparative studies of digital health equity across regions, countries, and health systems.

We look forward to receiving your submissions on this critical issue.

Prof. Dr. Weike Zhang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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