"There's an App for That" - How Digital technologies and social media shape our health

22^nd July 2020, 14:00 Online Webinar
Professsor Patty Kostkova
UCL IRDR Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies

Abstract

Recently, the massive explosion of medical evidence on the internet and mobile devices, plus increased citizens’ involvement in management of their health has changed the delivery of healthcare. The talk will outline the issues surrounding the dissemination of medical evidence and understanding public information needs from internet searches. Educational effectiveness of serious games highlights the opportunity mobile technology brought to training, community engagement and behavioural change. Social networking with increasing amount of user-generated content from social media and participatory surveillance systems provide readily available source of real-time monitoring and epidemic intelligence. This talk will also draw from several mobile technology projects. In particular, training and crowdsourcing for community engagement to combat the zika virus in Brazil, social media use for vaccination campaigns, early warning epidemics dashboard, and serious mobile games for increasing resilience and disaster preparedness in perinatal women in Nepal.

Biography

Prof Patty Kostkova is Professor in Digital Health and the Director of UCL IRDR Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies. She is a world leading researcher in the novel interdisciplinary domain of digital public health.