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Digital Health in South Africa

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A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 November 2024 | Viewed by 8395

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Prof. Dr. Jennifer Chipps

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Collection Editor

Faculty of Community and Health Sciences, School of Nursing, University of the Western Cape, Bellville 7535, South Africa
Interests: e-health; mental Health; aging; quantitative research

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In Africa and countries such as South Africa, with quadruple burdens of disease and limited access to health specialists, the field of digital health has expanded due to rapid cell phone ownership. Digital health services use information and communications technologies to promote wellbeing, improve accuracy and early detection of disease, enhance decision making and provide point of care health screening, health promotion, and personal health and risk management. The expanding field of digital health technology, therefore, has the potential to transform health care and play a significant role in sustainable development and ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for everyone at all ages (SDG3).

Researchers and practitioners in this field have been focusing on the use and evaluation of digital health technologies, such as mobile phones and health-related phone applications, sensors, devices, telehealth and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and/or other novel computational and statistical approaches. This Special Issue is open to the subject area of digital health in Africa.

The keywords listed below provide an outline of some of the possible areas of interest:

mHealth including mobile applications for health promotion and point of care mHealth services;
Electronic Health records and eHealth platforms;
AI computational and statistical approaches to improve health decision making and prediction;
Telehealth and telemedicine for educational and clinical services;
Smart sensors and wearable devices;
Geolocation and geopositioning in the detection of disease;
Social media monitoring;
Ethical legal and social issues in digital health;
Cost and effectiveness of digital health interventions.

Prof. Dr. Jennifer Chipps
Collection Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 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.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 344 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Survey of Telemedicine Use by Doctors in District Hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

by Christopher Morris, Richard E. Scott and Maurice Mars

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(20), 13029; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192013029 - 11 Oct 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1522

Abstract

There is anecdotal evidence of informal telemedicine activity in KwaZulu-Natal (KZ-N), South Africa. Aim: To determine the current extent of telemedicine in district hospitals in KZ-N; the range of clinical activities and technologies used; additional services needed; current knowledge and practice regarding legal, ethical, and regulatory issues; and the need to formalise telemedicine activities. Method: A cross-sectional survey of telemedicine use by 143 doctors working at 22 District hospitals in KZ-N. Results: Most doctors (96%) participated in some form of telemedicine across a spectrum of disciplines, but more than half did not consider their activities to constitute telemedicine. To meet their needs, doctors have started their own informal services with colleagues, using mostly instant messaging and chat groups (WhatsApp). Some doctors indicated the need to formalise these services and establish additional services. Few doctors were aware of the national telemedicine guidelines and the required written informed consent for telemedicine was seldom obtained. This could have serious legal, regulatory, and ethical implications. Conclusions: Practical clinical and technical guidelines and standard operating procedures need to be developed with the active participation of the clinical workforce. These should encourage innovation and greater use of telemedicine, including the use of instant messaging apps. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Health in South Africa)

14 pages, 847 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Perceptions of Telehealth Services for Hearing Loss in South Africa’s Public Healthcare System

by Aaqilah Bhamjee, Talita le Roux, De Wet Swanepoel, Marien Alet Graham, Kurt Schlemmer and Faheema Mahomed-Asmail

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(13), 7780; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137780 - 24 Jun 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2305

Abstract

Telehealth promises increased access to hearing healthcare services, primarily in areas where hearing healthcare resources are limited, such as within the South African public healthcare system. Telehealth for hearing healthcare is especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic, where physical distancing has been essential. This study aimed to describe audiologists’ perceptions regarding telehealth services for hearing loss within South Africa’s public healthcare system. This study was divided into two phases. During Phase 1, 97 audiologists completed an electronic survey regarding their perceptions of telehealth for hearing loss within South African public sector hospitals. Synchronous virtual focus-group discussions were conducted during Phase 2. Results indicated that audiologists recognized telehealth services’ potential to improve hearing healthcare efficiency within the public sector, and most (84.1%) were willing to use it. However, telehealth’s actual uptake was low despite almost doubling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prominent perceived barriers to telehealth were primarily related to hospital resources, including the unavailability of equipment for the remote hearing/specialized assessments, internet-related barriers, and limited IT infrastructure. An increased understanding of telehealth in South Africa’s public healthcare system will assist in identifying and in improving potential barriers to telehealth, including hospital resources and infrastructure. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Health in South Africa)

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11 pages, 327 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Audit and Survey of Informal Use of Instant Messaging for Dermatology in District Hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

by Christopher Morris, Richard E. Scott and Maurice Mars

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(12), 7462; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19127462 - 17 Jun 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1448

Abstract

Background. In KwaZulu-Natal (KZ-N), South Africa, recent reports have indicated that spontaneous use of smartphones has occurred, providing access to specialist dermatological care to remote areas. This informal use has raised a number of practical, legal, regulatory, and ethical concerns. Aim. To assess the nature and content of WhatsApp messages sent to dermatologists, to determine the referring doctors’ reasons for, and satisfaction with, their interactions, as well as their knowledge of legal, regulatory, and ethical requirements. Methods. A retrospective study of WhatsApp messages between referring doctors and dermatologists, as well as a cross-sectional survey of doctors working at district hospitals in KZ-N who used IM for teledermatology. Results. Use of IM (primarily WhatsApp) for teledermatology was almost universal, but often not considered ‘telemedicine’. Few referring doctors were aware of South Africa’s ethical guidelines and their requirements, and few of those who did followed them, e.g., the stipulated and onerous consent process and existing privacy and security legislations. No secure methods for record keeping or data storage of WhatsApp content were used. A desire to formalize the service existed. Conclusions. Based upon these findings, it was proposed that a number of described steps be followed in order to formalize the use of IM for teledermatology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Health in South Africa)

21 pages, 3305 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Artificial Intelligence-Driven Intrusion Detection in Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Networks: Towards Secure IoT-Enabled Healthcare Systems

by Shimbi Masengo Wa Umba, Adnan M. Abu-Mahfouz and Daniel Ramotsoela

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(9), 5367; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19095367 - 28 Apr 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2311

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are increasingly deployed in Internet of Things (IoT) systems for applications such as smart transportation, telemedicine, smart health monitoring and fall detection systems for the elderly people. Given that huge amount of data, vital and critical information can be exchanged between the different parts of a WSN, good management and protection schemes are needed to ensure an efficient and secure operation of the WSN. To ensure an efficient management of WSNs, the Software-Defined Wireless Sensor Network (SDWSN) paradigm has been recently introduced in the literature. In the same vein, Intrusion Detection Systems, have been used in the literature to safeguard the security of SDWSN-based IoTs. In this paper, three popular Artificial Intelligence techniques (Decision Tree, Naïve Bayes, and Deep Artificial Neural Network) are trained to be deployed as anomaly detectors in IDSs. It is shown that an IDS using the Decision Tree-based anomaly detector yields the best performances metrics both in the binary classification and in the multinomial classification. Additionally, it was found that an IDS using the Naïve Bayes-based anomaly detector was only adapted for binary classification of intrusions in low memory capacity SDWSN-based IoT (e.g., wearable fitness tracker). Moreover, new state-of-the-art accuracy (binary classification) and F-scores (multinomial classification) were achieved by introducing an end-to-end feature engineering scheme aimed at obtaining 118 features from the 41 features of the Network Security Laboratory-Knowledge Discovery in Databases (NSL-KDD) dataset. The state-of-the-art accuracy was pushed to 0.999777 using the Decision Tree-based anomaly detector. Finally, it was found that the Deep Artificial Neural Network should be expected to become the next default anomaly detector in the light of its current performance metrics and the increasing abundance of training data. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Health in South Africa)

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