Health Disparities and New Health Technologies - A Patients' and Human Rights Perspective

The human right to health requires that everyone should have equal opportunities to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health. In practice, this is hard to achieve, as health is shaped by social determinants. This article explores the impact personalized medicine and use of big data may have on health disparities. New health technologies offer a lot of hope for more individual and better health promotion and care, which potentially could be beneficial for the most deprived. However, there are also concerns that not all population groups will profit equally from this new population-based medicine, and that new digital health technologies will maintain - or even reinforce - existing health disparities. This article suggests using insights from poverty studies combined with a patients' and human rights-based approach to ensure that the most deprived are not left behind in the application of new health technologies.