In rural Australia, recent trends reveal an exponential increase in the rates of physical inactivity, central obesity, metabolic syndrome, and cancer in the population. The limited rural health workforce, which is struggling to meet this growing burden, is boosted by digital technologies such as My Health Record, Cardihab, Healthdirect, and MindSpot, all of which offer opportunities for improved diagnostics, monitoring, and management of chronic diseases. However, implementing proven digital health technologies in rural communities has been challenging on numerous fronts. This perspective aims to (1) highlight the rural health gap and propose a way forward in implementing evidence-based digital health technologies in the rural, regional, and remote communities of Australia and (2) guide future rural health policy.
Mahmood et al. (2025) studied this question.