The authors of the paper argue that digital health means a qualitative change on the horizon of healthcare transforming its very nature. And while it comes down to the countless disruptive technological innovations that are flooding the medical field in the last couple of years, the essence of this change is not technological, but cultural.Technological transitions have taken place in healthcare before, explains the paper, but this is the very first time that they lead to a meaningful transformation of the status quo. When personal computers became widely available in the 1990s, e-health emerged. When such computers could be connected into networks, telemedical services appeared. The rise of social media networks gave space to medicine 2.0 and health 2.0; while penetration of mobile phones and later smartphones summoned mobile health. But from the 2010s, the rate at which disruptive technologies appear is inducing a qualitative change for both the patients and their caregivers.

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