Digital health has long been championed as a solution to healthcare disparities. Mobile apps, wearable devices and virtual platforms offer the potential to reach people who are often left behind by traditional systems. But making that potential real requires more than technology; it takes thoughtful design, trusted partnerships and a commitment to listening. Joe Kiani, founder of Masimo and Willow Laboratories, recognizes that meaningful progress only happens when innovation meets community needs. By fostering collaboration between technology developers, healthcare providers, and the communities they aim to serve, digital health solutions can become truly transformative and inclusive.
Achieving this vision means involving diverse voices in the development process and tailoring solutions to real-world challenges. From inclusive user testing to collaborations with local health organizations, the path to equity starts with understanding the unique barriers different communities face. Technology must adapt to people, not the other way around. By centering human experience, digital health can become a true bridge to better care for all.
Understanding the Gaps
Underserved communities face a web of challenges that limit their access to healthcare: distance from medical facilities, lack of transportation, long wait times, language differences and inconsistent insurance coverage. Digital health tools offer a pathway around many of these barriers, but only if they are easy to use, affordable and relevant to everyday life.
For example, telehealth appointments can eliminate long commutes, health apps can provide education in multiple languages, and remote monitoring devices can keep individuals connected to providers without setting foot in a clinic. But these benefits are not automatic. When digital tools are designed without input from the people they aim to serve, adoption and impact remain low.
Personalizing Digital Health Through Community Voice
Digital health tools must reflect local priorities, languages and health beliefs to work well in underserved communities. Engaging with patients, caregivers and community health workers during development helps ensure that platforms are culturally appropriate, trusted and relevant.
This could mean co-designing features with bilingual educators, incorporating familiar foods into nutrition trackers, or ensuring that visual instructions are clear across different literacy levels. These adjustments may seem small, but they make a major difference in how tools are received and used. Feedback loops should be embedded from the start, not as an afterthought, but as a core part of responsible, community-centered design.
Gathering real-world feedback is essential to understanding how technology performs across different populations and whether it truly improves lives. As Joe Kiani Masimo founder puts it, “That’s what matters most: technology that actually helps people live healthier lives.” Communities are not monolithic, so personalization within these environments also matters. What works in one rural county may not be effective in an urban neighborhood. Developers must be open to customizing tools for hyperlocal needs and adjusting as they learn.
Reducing Friction, Increasing Trust
Even the most advanced health technology will not be used if it is difficult to access or understand. That’s why simplicity, privacy and transparency are especially important in digital tools for underserved populations.
Apps should require minimal onboarding. Instructions should be clear, jargon-free and available in multiple formats (audio, text, visual). Users must know exactly what data is being collected, how it will be used and who will see it. It builds confidence and ensures that no one is left guessing about their rights or responsibilities.
Importantly, trust is not just about privacy; it’s also about accountability. When users feel that a tool actually responds to their needs and improves their experience, they are more likely to engage consistently. That’s what transforms a promising pilot into a lasting solution.
Training and Support Make a Difference
Many underserved communities include people who are not digitally fluent. Providing basic training and ongoing support can be the difference between a tool that sits unused and one that becomes a daily companion.
This support might come from community health workers, local clinics or even peer educators. Embedding these services into trusted community organizations increases reach and reinforces the idea that digital health is part of, not separate from, the broader care ecosystem.
Training should also be ongoing. Health priorities change, apps update and new features are introduced. Regular touchpoints help users stay confident in their engagement and use new capabilities as they become available.
Infrastructure is Key
Access to smartphones, data plans and reliable internet remains uneven. Health platforms that assume high-speed connections or unlimited data may be inaccessible to the people who could benefit most.
Designing for low-bandwidth use, offering offline functionality and partnering with mobile providers to subsidize connectivity are essential steps. Device lending programs or community-based kiosks can also help close the access gap. Solutions should meet people where they are, not require them to catch up.
Developers should also account for device diversity. Not all users have the latest models or operating systems, and testing across a range of hardware configurations helps ensure equitable functionality.
From Promise to Practice
Turning digital health into a force for equity means moving beyond inspiration and into execution. That includes rigorous measurement, transparent reporting and a willingness to revise what doesn’t work. It means building products with, not just for, the communities they’re intended to serve. This alignment of purpose and practice. It underscores a core principle of digital health equity: listening to lived experience is not optional; it’s essential.
Delivering on the promise of digital equity also means building sustainable funding models. Pilot programs may attract grants, but long-term viability depends on integration with health systems, payers or public health infrastructure.
Digital health will not erase structural inequities on its own, but it can be a powerful tool for reducing their impact. When designed with empathy and deployed with care, it helps shift power back to patients, offering them more information, more convenience and more control over their well-being.
Success will depend on partnerships across sectors, from public health agencies and startups to schools, faith-based groups and grassroots coalitions. By working together, these stakeholders can ensure that digital health reaches every zip code, not just the well-connected ones.
The promise of digital health isn’t about the newest features or the sleekest design. It’s about building tools that meet people’s real needs, wherever they are, however they live and giving everyone a fair shot at a healthier future. The real progress in digital health will come when no one must ask if they’re included, when inclusive design and equitable access will be built into every line of code, every outreach strategy and every long-term vision for better care.