Key result
Digital sociotechnological systems shape human and planetary health through four structural economic and political domains.
This paper describes the prevailing digital sociotechnological order as the structural source of the digital determinants of health and outlines its implications for governing human and planetary health.
Digital factors merit inclusion in equity assessments; leaves open standardized metrics for cardiovascular research.
Digital transformations exert increasing influence over the lives of the global population, shaping opportunities and generating harms for health and wellbeing across the spectrum of digital access and engagement. The scale of influence of digital transformations on human and planetary health marks the urgency of attention to the digital determinants of health (DDoH). In this Series paper, we describe a prevailing digital sociotechnological order (DSTO) as the structural source of the DDoH. The DSTO is composed of a set of dominant assumptions that motivate digital practices operating through four features (political norms, economic logics, infrastructures, and personal and social practices) to affect human and planetary health. We describe the implications of the DSTO for understanding, studying, and governing the DDoH, and present recommendations for future work.
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Shaw et al. (2026) conducted a review in Global human and planetary health. Digital sociotechnological order (DSTO) / digital transformations was evaluated on Human and planetary health outcomes. The digital sociotechnological order operates through 4 features (political norms, economic logics, infrastructures, and social practices) to structurally shape human and planetary health.
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