Digital health equity frameworks and key concepts: a scoping review

Digital health equity, the opportunity for all to engage with digital health tools to support good health outcomes, is an emerging priority across the world. The field of digital health equity would benefit from a comprehensive and systematic understanding of digital health, digital equity, and health equity, with a focus on real-world applications. We conducted a scoping review to identify and describe published frameworks and concepts relevant to digital health equity interventions.

We conducted a scoping review of published peer-reviewed literature guided by the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews. We searched 5 databases for frameworks related to or applied to digital health or equity interventions. Using deductive and inductive approaches, we analyzed frameworks and concepts based on the socio-ecological model.

Of the 910 publications initially identified, we included 44 (4.8%) publications in our review that described 42 frameworks that sought to explain the ecosystem of digital and/or health equity, but none were comprehensive. From the frameworks we identified 243 concepts grouped into 43 categories including characteristics of individuals, communities, and organizations; societal context; perceived value of the intervention by and impacts on individuals, community members, and the organization; partnerships; and access to digital health services, in-person services, digital services, and data and information, among others.

We suggest a consolidated definition of digital health equity, highlight illustrative frameworks, and suggest concepts that may be needed to enhance digital health equity intervention development and evaluation.

The expanded understanding of frameworks and relevant concepts resulting from this study may inform communities and stakeholders who seek to achieve digital inclusion and digital health equity.