EXAMINING THE HEALTH IMPACTS OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

Abstract

Digital technologies can affect human’s health by supporting the care delivery in healthcare organizations and reforming individual’s lifestyles in daily life. Electronic Health Records (EHR) is a major system used in health organizations. The first paper in this thesis utilizes the big EHR data to conduct multiple disease predictive analytics (MDPA), given that people tend to have multiple diseases or develop multiple complications during disease development. Compared with current data-driven MDPA models, our knowledge-added method significantly improve prediction performance. Moreover, the digital technologies used in daily practice, rather during health care delivery, may also have the ability to affect public health. Online food delivery (OFD) applications provide users an easy access to various food and reshape users’ food environment. In my second paper, I study the health impact of OFD service on diet-related disease, such as diabetes. Specifically, we found that the OFD applications significantly increase the diabetes risk.