Introduction to the blog series ‘Exploring the Intersections of Technology, Health, and Law’

The rise of digital health surveillance during the Covid-19 pandemic, and more recently, through the scaling up of AI applications in healthcare, has revolutionised the provision of digital health services. These services are being provided through health information technologies such as wearable devices, diagnostic tools, telemedicine, and increasingly, sector-wide changes through integrated medical records and platforms. However, the increasing digitisation of health continues to raise sociolegal challenges due to a lack of regulatory oversight at both national and international levels. This regulatory gap risks increasing greater health inequalities through algorithmic biases. Additionally, growing cybersecurity concerns have arisen from an over-reliance on self-regulation. More importantly, the rise of digitisation is leading to greater health privatisation, sparking concerns that policymakers may be neglecting proven public health outcomes in favour of experimental and unproven digital health alternatives.

This blog series, titled Exploring the Intersections of Technology, Health, and Law, explores these critical issues—from data governance in the Global South and ethical data infrastructures to the inclusive use of AI in health. We were keen to engage with a wide range of voices and include several contributions from authors in the Global South. We hope this sociolegal approach to understanding the regulation of health digitisation sheds light on how digital technologies can reinforce inequalities while also offering potential societal solutions to these existing challenges.

The blog series is guest edited by Prof. Sharifah Sekalala and Yureshya Perera. Written as part of the project There is No App for This! Regulating the Migration of Health Data in Africa, funded by the Wellcome Trust (grant number: 224856/Z/21/Z).