Digital Health Interventions for Natural Disasters

Randy Horton

Published on: October 6th, 2022

Last week, Hurricane Ian devastated Florida’s southwest coast, destroying homes, flooding roads and putting people’s health at risk. Natural disasters exacerbate the healthcare inequities already present in impacted communities. Existing infrastructure for ensuring the health and safety of the people in the community can’t keep up with hurricanes, floods and loss of power.

This awful human tragedy raises another familiar question: How can we provide continuity of healthcare delivery and emergency treatment to people in the wake of destruction? How can we prevent these disasters from deepening already stark health inequities? Digital health interventions hold part of the key to answering these complex questions.

In March of 2022, Orthogonal’s Randy Horton, Chief Solutions Officer, partnered with Dr. Joseph West, CEO of the Florida Institute for Healthcare Innovation, to present “Natural Disasters, Response and Technology for Advancing Continuity of Care” at the inaugural ViVE 2022 conference in Miami, Florida. Randy and Dr. West were joined by the following panel of expert speakers:

Terrell Anderson, MBA, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Growth at Clinify Health
Catherine Toms, MD, MPH, Florida Clinicians for Climate Action, and Senior Advisor for Climate and Health, Health Care Without Harm
Nate Pelzer, Co-Founder & CEO, Clinify Health
Derrick L. Miles, Founder/Chief Executive Officer at CourMed

The panelists discussed a macro view of human and health systems, Social Determinants of Health (SDoH), the social implications of natural disasters, how people’s health is impacted and how we can use digital technologies to create solutions that help us overcome these challenges. The exciting and forward-looking conversation serves as a call-to-action for healthcare technology innovators and promoters to get involved in bringing health equity to impacted communities.

The full event is available to watch in the following videos:

Part 1: Natural Disasters, Response & Technology for Continuity of Care

Part 2: Population Health Management: Data Collection, Use and Dissemination for Scale

Thanks to HLTH and CHiME for sponsoring ViVE 2022. We look forward to HLTH 2022 this November in Vegas and ViVE 2023 next March in Nashville for ongoing, timely discussions on the social impact of digital health.