Digital Doctors

Digital technology has utterly transformed the way we shop, the way we hail a taxi, the way we read a newspaper and the way we interact with our friends. Often we've reaped benefits but we've also seen the cost in our shopping centres, casualisation of labour, the rise of fake news and in daily headlines about the influence of social media. Are we now heading for a similar transformation in the world of healthcare? Professor Ian Craddock leads the area of Digital Health at the University of Bristol and regularly advises companies and policy makers nationally and internationally on this topic.

Digital health technologies have a potential to help us change our behaviour, develop healthy habits and become happier. Hundreds of apps have been designed to help us track every aspect of our life in the pursuit of improved health and well-being. And while technology can be incredibly useful, it does have a dark side. From self-tracking devices that discourage physical activity and mental health apps that can make you feel worse to sexist period trackers, many digital health products are based on good intentions. We can do better than this – and in this talk I will show how.