One Digital Health Intervention for Monitoring Human and Animal Welfare in Smart Cities: Viewpoint and Use Case

Abstract

Smart cities and digital public health are closely related. Managing digital transformation in urbanization and living spaces is challenging. It is critical to prioritize the emotional and physical health and well-being of humans and their animals in the dynamic and ever-changing environment they share. Human-animal bonds are continuous as they live together or share urban spaces and have a mutual impact on each other’s health as well as the surrounding environment. In addition, sensors embedded in the Internet of Things are everywhere in smart cities. They monitor events and provide appropriate responses. In this regard, accident and emergency informatics (A&EI) offers tools to identify and manage overtime hazards and disruptive events. Such manifold focuses fit with One Digital Health (ODH), which aims to transform health ecosystems with digital technology by proposing a comprehensive framework to manage data and support health-oriented policies. We showed and discussed how, by developing the concept of ODH intervention, the ODH framework can support the comprehensive monitoring and analysis of daily life events of humans and animals in technologically integrated environments such as smart homes and smart cities. We developed an ODH intervention use case in which A&EI mechanisms run in the background. The ODH framework structures the related data collection and analysis to enhance the understanding of human, animal, and environment interactions and associated outcomes. The use case looks at the daily journey of Tracy, a healthy woman aged 27 years, and her dog Mego. Using medical Internet of Things, their activities are continuously monitored and analyzed to prevent or manage any kind of health-related abnormality. We reported and commented on an ODH intervention as an example of a real-life ODH implementation. We gave the reader examples of a “how-to” analysis of Tracy and Mego’s daily life activities as part of a timely implementation of the ODH framework. For each activity, relationships to the ODH dimensions were scored, and relevant technical fields were evaluated in light of the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable principles. This “how-to” can be used as a template for further analyses. An ODH intervention is based on Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data and real-time processing for global health monitoring, emergency management, and research. The data should be collected and analyzed continuously in a spatial-temporal domain to detect changes in behavior, trends, and emergencies. The information periodically gathered should serve human, animal, and environmental health interventions by providing professionals and caregivers with inputs and “how-to's” to improve health, welfare, and risk prevention at the individual and population levels. Thus, ODH complementarily combined with A&EI is meant to enhance policies and systems and modernize emergency management.

Sharing Digital Health Educational Resources in a One-Stop Shop Portal: Tutorial on the Catalog and Index of Digital Health Teaching Resources (CIDHR) Semantic Search Engine

“…Thus, CIDHR will have an important role on the educational grounds to improve digital health literacy of students and lecturers and to increase their engagement with these ubiquitous ways of delivering and receiving health care [ 46 , 53 ].…”

Enhancing Animal Production through Smart Agriculture: Possibilities, Hurdles, Resolutions, and Advantages

“…Smart devices for animal health encompass a variety of tools such as activity trackers, GPS collars, remote monitoring systems, smart feeders, health wearables, pet-access doors, tank regulators, telemedicine services, livestock sensors, and health apps. Collectively, these devices work to guarantee the safety and well-being of animals [100,101].…”

Leveraging Data and Technology to Enhance Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Health Outcomes

“…The development of digital health literacy is vital in harnessing the benefits of digital media for health, countering misinformation, and addressing health inequalities [21,22]. In this regard, a specific focus is on Smart (Healthy) Cities, wherein the pervasive use of digital technologies is filtered through policies of digital (health) literacy to foster a mature and aware citizen engagement towards all the three One Health domains (human, animal, surrounding environment) [11].…”

“…Planning (and justifying) significant investments in digital health solutions are also critical, given the development of affordable and sustainable healthcare systems. In this context, building digital health literacy is essential to creating demand for digital health services within the modern and evolving public health sector and addressing the habit of seeking analog services to improve self-care and reduce critical events [11,21]. Woods et al [26] report the experience from Queensland, Australia, where research was conducted to evaluate the concept of digital maturity and the use of digital maturity models (MMs) to assess the level of capability in various dimensions of digital health.…”

“…This means, in turn, focusing on centering on (and strengthening) educational needs for the healthcare workforce, computer scientists, and decision-makers to acquire Biomedical and Health Informatics (BMHI) knowledge and skills at various levels [10]. This focus on education can make it possible to leverage the power of data, technology, and information systems to: (i) promote collaboration between stakeholders, (ii) enhance decision-making to gather, integrate, analyze, and share health-related data based on the interconnectedness between human, animal, and environmental domains, and (iii) set up and deploy the righteous interventions [11].…”