Key result
The authors suggest that a digital health scorecard must clarify its scope, involve user input early, learn from past multi-stakeholder challenges, and consider global contexts before pursuing validation.
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Design
Editorial
This correspondence highlights the challenges of creating a universal validation framework for digital health interventions and emphasizes the need for multi-stakeholder input, including from low- and middle-income countries.
Mathews et al. propose an ambitious pathway for validation of digital health and mention that a pilot study and detailed corresponding framework are forthcoming. 1 While we are generally supportive of initiatives to improve the usefulness and value that digital health can offer, we have some considerations and suggestions. Firstly, it needs to be further clarified which types of interventions the digital health scorecard will deal with as a ‘one-size fits all’ approach for validation is unlikely to succeed. As Mathews et al. describe, digital health includes a wide range of scientific concepts, technologies, functions, and users. 1 For example, if we only consider health apps, not even one initiative will be able to provide a framework for scoring all the 300,000+ and the 200+ mobile health apps, which are added daily cited by the authors. 2 Most of these apps do not fall under medical device regulation or even have a ‘medical purpose’ but are aimed at improving wellbeing and fitness. The gatekeeper in this aspect are the app stores and, for example, Apple’s App store has created a checklist of items that health apps should adhere to. 3 Collaborating with app stores is one way to ensure that published health apps at least adhere to basic quality standards.
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Velthoven et al. (2019) reported a letter. The authors suggest that a digital health scorecard must clarify its scope, involve user input early, learn from past multi-stakeholder challenges, and consider global contexts before pursuing validation.
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