TT’S TECH TAKE 004

💻❤️TT'S TECH TAKE 004
What if the technology designed to make healthcare more accessible is actually leaving some patients behind?

Today's tech. Five human questions. One healthier future.

Digital health has huge potential! Telehealth can bring care into someone's home. AI can support communication and access. Assistive technologies can help people participate more independently in their care.
However, access to technology does not automatically mean accessible technology.

A new scoping review published in JAMA Network Open examined disability inclusion in digital health. After reviewing 40 peer-reviewed studies and 40 gray literature sources, researchers identified several factors that support more equitable digital health, including accessibility from the beginning, meaningful codesign with people with disabilities, and representative datasets. Accessibility should never be something we add later; it should be part of the design from the beginning❤️

💻❤️ TT'S TOP 5

1️⃣ Does it actually help people?
Digital health should increase independence, access, communication, or quality of care. Innovation means little if the people who could benefit cannot actually use it.

2️⃣ Who could be left behind?
Disability is not one experience. Visual, hearing, mobility, cognitive, speech, communication, and other disabilities can create very different interactions with technology.

3️⃣ Is it fair, and who helped build it?
People with disabilities should not only be people technology is designed for. They should have meaningful opportunities to help design, test, evaluate, and improve it. Nothing about us without us should apply to healthcare technology too.

4️⃣ Can we trust the technology and the data behind it?
As AI becomes part of healthcare, representative data matters. So do privacy, security, transparency, and testing for bias. A system can perform well overall and still fail particular communities.

5️⃣ Are we measuring what actually matters?
Accuracy, adoption, and efficiency matter, but so do other questions:
Can people use it independently? Can they understand it? Does it work with assistive technology? Did it improve their experience?

Technology can be an incredible accessibility tool, and it can also become another barrier. The difference may begin long before technology reaches a patient, with who was invited into the room when it was designed.

💭 Now I want to hear from you:
When healthcare organizations develop new technology, at what point should patients with disabilities be brought into the design process? And what would meaningful involvement actually look like?

🔗 READ THE RESEARCH:
Umucu, E., Lee, B., Vernon, A., et al. (2026). Inclusive Digital Health Strategies for Persons With Disabilities: A Scoping Review. JAMA Network Open.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2854057