Digital health, as a specialty in medicine and other health professions, applies information and communications technologies to manage illnesses and health risks and to promote wellness. Digital health has a broad scope, which includes the use of wearable devices, mobile devices, telehealth and telemedicine, health information technology, and big data efforts. These studies have been selected as examples from the NIH Social, Behavioral and Economic Impacts of COVID-19 initiative catalog of projects; the full set of projects can be viewed under PAR-20-043

These projects use digital healthcare interventions to address the secondary health effects related to social, behavioral, and economic impact of COVID-19. They focus on the role and impact of digital health interventions to address access, delivery, effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability of health assessments and interventions for secondary effects (e.g., behavioral health or self-management of chronic conditions) that are utilized during the pandemic. This is particularly important for populations who experience health disparities which have been exacerbated by the pandemic.