Over the past decades, various entities have defined health equity in various ways. According to the US Centers for Disease Control,

Health equity is achieved when every person has the opportunity to “attain his or her full health potential” and no one is “disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined circumstances.”

In a recent article from Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, authors highlight these core tenants:

• Every person deserves to live a healthy life.
• Due to social, economic, and environmental factors, not everyone has access to healthcare and proper health education.
• The aim of healthcare equity is to ensure that everyone can access affordable, culturally competent healthcare regardless of several variables (race, ethnicity, age, etc.)

“Harnessing creative, population-specific technologies and service offerings can connect more patients to providers for health support,” the authors wrote.

“We wholeheartedly agree,” Beth Strohbusch, Equiva head of marketing, wrote in a recent blog post. “And we believe that in order to truly tip the scales with health equity, digital health solutions must be readily accessible, extremely easy to use, and affordable — for patients, loved ones, clinicians and healthcare organizations.”

An example is a FCC Covid-19 telehealth program-funded project where Equiva collaborated with a team of researchers at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital to provide hundreds of tablet devices and broadband allowance to patients in the early days of Covid-19.

New research published in JMIR Formative Research shows three times greater weight loss among those who also reduced their depressive symptoms compared to those who focused on weight loss alone. The new paper from Vida Health adds to the growing body of peer-reviewed research showing that integrated care for body and mind is the most effective treatment for chronic conditions.

Improvements in Depression Outcomes Following a Digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Intervention in a Polychronic Population: Retrospective Study looked at the effectiveness of a therapist-supported 12-week, app-based cognitive behavioral therapy program. The study focused on adults with symptoms of depression and anxiety who also have chronic physical disease including obesity and type 2 diabetes.

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Canaery is digitizing the sense of smell to enhance the way we perceive and monitor the world around us. The neurotech startup has closed a more than $4 million round of seed funding to accelerate the development of its scent-sensing platform. Breakout Ventures led the round with participation from Dolby Family Ventures, KdT Ventures and SOSV. One of the potential applications for the technology is for early diagnosis of diseases.

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Healthcare Tech Solutions (HCTS), a healthcare consulting group and the makers of DICOMSync, has entered into a partnership with DocPanel, a global innovator in providing subspecialized radiology coverage, to improve breast imaging workflows for imaging providers.

DocPanel and HCTS have teamed up to provide breast imaging facilities with a reliable solution for converting the proprietary data, while securing subspecialty interpretations from fellowship-trained breast radiologists.

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Picture: akindo, Getty Images