Digital health experts’ views on building One Health Surveillance using Telehealth

Abstract

Abstract One health (“OH”) refers to integration of human, animal, and ecosystem health. An OH-based disease surveillance will enable early detection of zoonoses and ecosystem changes, instrumental for pre-empting future pandemics. Telehealth is used for preventive and curative remote care; telehealth can be instrumental for developing OH-surveillance but the barriers and levers in building such systems are unknown. We address this by conducting an innovation sprint with digital health experts at an international conference. We asked the participants how we might build a telehealth-driven OH surveillance system. They identified barriers, opportunities, and needs, and constructed empathy maps. Analyses of their responses revealed that they identified lack of a centralised system as a barrier. Networks, and centralised data systems would facilitate building telehealth-based OH surveillance. These findings are also consistent with existing approaches of OH surveillance without telehealth. This suggests implementing telehealth in OH surveillance will have similar issues to existing approaches.