---
type: source
title: "Equity in Digital Health: Access and Utilization of Remote Patient Monitoring, Medical Apps, and Wearables in Underserved Communities"
author: "Omolola Adepoju, Patrick Dang, Holly Nguyen, Jennifer Mertz"
url: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11450565/
date: 2024-09-01
domain: health
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: processed
priority: high
tags: [digital-health, equity, remote-patient-monitoring, wearables, health-disparities, digital-divide, hypertension]
---

## Content

Published 2024 in a peer-reviewed journal (Adepoju et al., PMC11450565).

**Study focus:** Assess access to and utilization of remote patient monitoring (RPM), medical apps, and wearables in racially diverse, lower-income populations.

**Key findings — the equity tension:**

1. **Despite high smart device ownership** in the populations studied, utilization of digital health tools remained lower than in higher-income populations. High device ownership does not translate to health-improving app usage.

2. **Medical app usage disparities by income:** Usage was significantly lower among individuals with:
   - Income levels below $35,000
   - Education below a bachelor's degree
   - Males

3. **Barriers to RPM equity:**
   - Cost of technology (devices, data plans)
   - Poor internet connectivity
   - Poor health literacy
   - Transportation barriers (ironic — RPM is supposed to remove this barrier, but onboarding requires it)

4. **Policy infrastructure attempted:** Affordability Connectivity Program (ACP) sought to provide low-income households with discounted broadband and devices — but ACP was discontinued in June 2024 (federal budget failure).

5. **Core finding: Digital health tends to benefit more affluent and privileged groups more than those less privileged** — even when technology access is nominally equal, health literacy and navigation barriers concentrate benefits upward.

**Contrast with JAMA Network Open meta-analysis (2024):** That meta-analysis showed tailored digital health works for disparity populations; this study explains WHY generic deployment fails — the design matters as much as the technology.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is the critical counterweight to the JAMA meta-analysis. The two sources together create a precise claim: digital health can close hypertension disparities IF specifically designed for disparity populations, but generic deployment reproduces and potentially widens existing disparities. The "if tailored" qualifier is not a minor caveat — it requires intentional design, reimbursement alignment, and literacy/navigation support that commercial digital health products do not currently provide at scale.

**What surprised me:** The discontinuation of the Affordability Connectivity Program in June 2024 removed the primary federal infrastructure for digital health equity. At the exact moment digital health is being positioned as the solution to the hypertension failure, the connectivity subsidy that made it accessible to low-income households was terminated.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Data on whether RPM programs that are specifically deployed in safety-net health systems (FQHCs, VA) show the equity premium that the JAMA meta-analysis's "tailored" interventions do. The FQHC/VA population would be the best test of real-world equity-achieving RPM.

**KB connections:**
- `only-23-percent-of-treated-us-hypertensives-achieve-blood-pressure-control...` — digital health is a proposed solution; this source shows it requires intentional design
- `the mental health supply gap is widening not closing because demand outpaces workforce growth and technology primarily serves the already-served` — same structural pattern in mental health and digital health generally
- `medical care explains only 10-20 percent of health outcomes...` — if digital health primarily reaches advantaged populations, it reinforces the SDOH advantage of those populations without reaching the 80-90% SDOH-burdened majority

**Extraction hints:**
- New claim: "Generic digital health deployment reproduces existing disparities by disproportionately benefiting higher-income, higher-education users despite nominal technology access equity, because health literacy and navigation barriers concentrate digital health benefits upward"
- Pair with JAMA meta-analysis to create a scoped divergence: "tailored digital health works for disparities" vs. "generic deployment widens disparities"

**Context:** ACP termination (June 2024) removed the federal connectivity subsidy that was the main infrastructure mitigation. The TEMPO pilot (Dec 2025) includes a "rural adjustment" for CMS ACCESS participants but does not address urban food desert populations or the literacy/navigation barriers documented here.

## Curator Notes

PRIMARY CONNECTION: `only-23-percent-of-treated-us-hypertensives-achieve-blood-pressure-control-demonstrating-pharmacological-availability-is-not-the-binding-constraint.md`

WHY ARCHIVED: Creates a necessary tension with the JAMA meta-analysis — these two sources together define exactly what "digital health can and can't do" for hypertension equity. The extractor should treat them as a pair.

EXTRACTION HINT: Extract the claim that generic vs. tailored is the key variable. Flag for potential divergence file with the JAMA meta-analysis source. The real claim is "digital health's equity value is design-dependent, not technology-dependent."
