Digital technologies are disrupting health care and creating new opportunities and risks for all actors in the medical ecosystem. Moreover, many of these developments rely heavily on data and AI algorithms to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor sources of epidemic diseases, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other pathogenic outbreaks. However, these opportunities and risks have a complex character involving multiple dimensions (notably legal, ethical, technical and governance) and any mapping and navigation of this new space requires an appreciation of the complexity of these issues and multidisciplinary dialogue.
This introductory chapter briefly outlines the main theme of this volume, namely, to review the new opportunities and risks of digital healthcare from various disciplinary perspectives – specifically law, public policy, organisational studies, and applied ethics. Based on this inter-disciplinary approach, we hope that effective strategies to ensure that the benefits of this on-going revolution are deployed in a responsible and sustainable way can be developed. The second part of the chapter consists of an overview of the four constituent parts and fourteen substantive chapters that comprise this volume.