Digital Health in Hospital Medicine

Dear Colleagues,

In just a short time, digital innovation in the field of medicine has led to new technologies becoming available for the treatment of patients and to a new model of care pathways and health processes being developed. Moreover, the pandemic emergency of the SARS-Cov-2 infection has fostered and catalyzed the process of integrating digital methods into clinical practice by promoting telemedicine modalities with the aim of reducing the risk of infection.

The hospital setting has also benefited from technological progress, both in terms of new treatment modalities (e.g., robotic surgery; imaging diagnostics guided by artificial intelligence algorithms; the possibility of analyzing large quantities of data to identify predictive factors at an early stage and personalize treatment, etc.) and the use of new instruments, now available at a low cost on a large scale. These advances have allowed remote and/or non-invasive monitoring of patient parameters, such as blood pressure or glycaemia, and teleconsultation.

While preliminary evidence is beginning to demonstrate the clinical benefits and competitiveness of these technologies in the clinical setting, their practical applications are without a shared benchmark or a validated implementation process.

In this light, the aims of this Special Issue are:

• to provide a synoptic summary of the current evidence of the applications of digital health in the hospital setting, with a special focus on telemedicine, mobile health, artificial intelligence, data mining, process mining, -omics technology and robotic in healthcare;
• to collect preliminary applications, proof of concept, proposals and results of clinical experiences in which these technological innovations are applied;
• to measure the impact of digital health in a hospital setting, not only in terms of clinical outcomes but also in terms of performance indexes and sustainability, in the perspective of value-based healthcare;
• to evaluate possible limitations and future perspectives in different countries in a global health context;
• to define and explicate the regulatory and ethical perimeters and boundaries in which technology (from new digital devices to innovative algorithms and software for clinical use) is to be integrated, including the evaluation of a digitally enhanced doctor–patient relationship;
• to consider the new training requirements and medical education issues for physicians and healthcare professionals who see themselves as either involved in the research and managerial process of designing and validating technologies or as users for a safe clinical management of their patients.

We welcome submissions of the following article types: reviews, original articles, brief reports, case reports, project reports, perspectives and protocols

Dr. Calogero Casà
Dr. Nicola Gentili
Prof. Dr. Vincenzo Valentini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Hospitals is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• digital health
• telemedicine
• mobile health
• artificial intelligence
• data mining
• process mining
• omics technology
• robotic
• medical education
• global health