Digital Health

How are digital technologies transforming health and healthcare? What does this mean for health equity, evidence, governance, and practice? Digital Health addresses these questions by providing students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds with a rigorous, interdisciplinary introduction to the field.

Digital Health is a common first-semester course for all students enrolled in the MSc in Health. It serves as a conceptual gateway to the programme's specialist tracks and their respective courses — including Public Health in the Digital Era, Health Informatics, and Digital Health Interventions — by equipping all students with a shared vocabulary and critical framework before they diverge into their respective majors.

The course covers seven interconnected themes across a full semester: the digital health landscape and taxonomy of technologies; digital equity and health information quality, including global and LMIC perspectives; the digitalization of health institutions and data standards; health data ecosystems and digital phenotyping; artificial intelligence in clinical and public health; digital ethics, governance and regulation; and the design, implementation, and evaluation of digital health interventions, including patient-facing technologies.

The course is designed for students with diverse backgrounds — including public health, biomedical sciences, data science, engineering, economics, communication, and social sciences — and assumes no prior specialised knowledge in either health systems or digital technologies.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

1. Describe the landscape of digital health technologies and explain their relevance to both individual and public health.
2. Explain how digital technologies are reshaping health information environments and the implications for health literacy, communication, and equity — including in low- and middle-income country contexts.
3. Recognise the potential and limitations of AI and data-driven approaches in health at a level sufficient for critical engagement with the field and for subsequent specialist study.
4. Analyse the ethical, legal, and social dimensions of digital health, including data privacy, algorithmic bias, consent, and the regulatory landscape.
5. Identify the main categories of digital health interventions, including patient-facing technologies, and understand the key questions involved in evaluating and implementing them.
6. Apply an interdisciplinary perspective — whether from communication, public health, or another field — to assess digital health tools, policies, and strategies.

• Salute e benessere
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In presenza

Teaching methods include lectures, discussion of distributed materials, and ad-hoc analytical tasks, all designed to develop a critical approach to digital health. The course draws on scientific literature and real-world examples and integrates perspectives from public health, communication, informatics, and ethics. Active participation is essential to learning outcomes.

The final grade is based on two components:

• Final exam (computer-based) — 70%. Individual exam during the official exam session at the end of semester.
• Assignments — 30%. Details to be confirmed.

Course attendance: Students are required to attend a minimum of 80% of sessions. Absences must be justified and communicated promptly to the course director. Students that attend less than 80% of sessions are requested to submit an individual written assignment (pass/not pass) on top of the final exam (70%) and assignments (30%).

Exemplary Literature/ Sources
Readings and additional material will be made available on iCorsi.