Search Results for: "contact tracing"

Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp. 79 – 83 PDF Akarsh Venkatasubramanian Digital technologies offer huge potential to improve the accuracy, breadth, reliability, and speed of contact tracing and other public health surveillance measures. However, in the absence of appropriate global governance frameworks, the usage of digital technologies during health emergencies presents multidimensional challenges. The article by Sharifah Sekalala and colleagues in this issue analyzes the human rights implications of tools…

Continue reading “VIEWPOINT The Human Rights Challenges of Digital COVID-19 Surveillance”

Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 63 – 66 PDF Rajat Khosla Technology is widely known for moving fast and breaking things, to paraphrase Mark Zuckerberg. Indeed, technology is fast moving into each and every aspect of our life, especially our health and well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how technology can and should play an important role in helping stop the spread of the disease, including by disseminating public health…

Continue reading “VIEWPOINT Technology, Health, and Human Rights: A Cautionary Tale for the Post-Pandemic World”

Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 55 -62 PDF Carmel Williams Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) is being hailed by various actors, including United Nations agencies, as having the potential to alleviate poverty, reduce inequalities, and help attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).[1] Many AI projects are promoted as making important contributions to health care and to reducing global and national health inequities. However, one of the risks of AI-driven health projects…

Continue reading “PERSPECTIVE A Health Rights Impact Assessment Guide for Artificial Intelligence Projects”

Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 41 – 48 PDF Sara L. M. Davis The COVID-19 pandemic has massively accelerated a global shift toward new digital technologies in health, a trend underway before the crisis. In response to the pandemic, many countries are rapidly scaling up the use of new digital tools and artificial intelligence (AI) for tasks ranging from digital contact tracing, to diagnosis, to health information management, to the…

Continue reading “PERSPECTIVE The Trojan Horse: Digital Health, Human Rights, and Global Health Governance”

Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 21-32 PDF Nina Sun, Kenechukwu Esom, Mandeep Dhaliwal, and Joseph J. Amon Abstract Digital health technologies have been heralded as a critical solution to challenges and gaps in the delivery of quality health care and essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Yet they also present threats to privacy and confidentiality, which can lead to discrimination and violence, resulting in violations of the rights to…

Continue reading “Human Rights and Digital Health Technologies”

Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 7 – 20 PDF Sharifah Sekalala, Stéphanie Dagron, Lisa Forman, and Benjamin Mason Meier Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has led policy makers to expand traditional public health surveillance to take advantage of new technologies, such as tracking apps, to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2. This article explores the human rights dimensions of how these new surveillance technologies are being used and assesses the extent to…

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Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 1 – 6 PDF Sara L. M. Davis and Carmel Williams In Donna Haraway’s 1992 A Cyborg Manifesto, the medical anthropologist describes the cyborg as a “hybrid of machine and organism” living “on the boundary between fact and fiction”: “We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism.”[1] In 2020, the world that Haraway imagined has arrived, accelerated by the isolation and…

Continue reading “EDITORIAL Enter the Cyborgs: Health and Human Rights in the Digital Age”

Volume 22/2, December 2020, pp 227 – 242 PDF Lisa Montel, Anuj Kapilashrami, Michel P. Coleman, and Claudia Allemani Abstract The UK’s response to COVID-19 has been widely criticized by scientists and the public. According to EuroMOMO, a European mortality monitoring initiative, the excess mortality that may be attributable to COVID-19 in England is one of the highest in Europe, second only to Spain. While critiqued from a public health…

Continue reading “The Right to Health in Times of Pandemic: What Can We Learn from the UK’s Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak?”