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Invited Commentary
February 25, 2019

Evaluating Digital Health Tools—Prospective, Experimental, and Real World

Author Affiliations
  • 1Division of Hospital Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
  • 2Center for Digital Health Innovation, University of California, San Francisco
JAMA Intern Med. 2019;179(6):840-841. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.7229

Digital health software tools (DHSTs) are becoming increasingly available to patients, health care systems, and other key stakeholders seeking to enhance patient-centered care with innovative apps, sensors, algorithms, and data visualization approaches. Broadly speaking, DHSTs seek to improve care by providing more informed treatment recommendations, clarifying and refining diagnoses, optimizing workflows and efficiency, and facilitating access to and use of complex health care data. However, even as these tools increase in use and popularity, real challenges exist to identify which DHSTs are appropriate for which patients or which clinical settings, how to integrate them into clinical and other care, and which DHSTs are safe and effective in practice.1

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