By 2030, $11B will be spent of digital technologies each year. Advances in digital technology assist individuals take greater control of their personal health. Smart phone applications are expected to have the biggest cost benefit on non-adherence and hospital readmission over the next five years.
Smartphones have transformed the way people access information. Their ability to engage the user and deliver high-quality content is unsurpassed by any other device. Smartphone technology has the potential to provide information and support to patients by facilitating communication with their health care team. Smartphone-based interventions offer new possibilities for health promotion and symptom management and represent a potentially new platform for delivering interventions to reduce cancer patients’ unmet needs and distress, and improve their participation in their own health care.
Examples of the role of health technologies will be provided including details of a NHMRC funded randomized controlled trial testing the impact of a smartphone application to support new diagnosed people with cancer.
Digital technologies will change how people access information and support, and has the potential to deliver cost-effective, easily accessed interventions, capable of improving patients' experience, while reducing healthcare costs.