Digital Inclusion and Human Development: Is Digital Inclusion a Social Determinant of Health that Matters?

The unequal distribution of resources following the pandemic have exacerbated existing inequalities in income and access to services needed to stay healthy. Digital technologies, in particular, mobile health applications, are seen to be a means of transforming access to care and socio-economic resources. This paper explores the impact of digital inclusion on human development and health outcomes. It also examines whether access to digital technologies and services, like mobile health, can act as a means to improve healthcare access and socio-economic resources, thereby addressing health inequities. This study on digital inclusion, human development, and health outcomes investigates two main questions: 1) How does digital inclusion effect human development? And 2) what is the role of digital inclusion as a social determinant of health? In order to investigate, study adopts a quantitative approach to explore how digital technologies and services can enhance healthcare access and socio-economic resources, potentially mitigating health inequities. By analyzing the correlation between digital inclusion and the Human Development Index (HDI), the study highlights a significant positive relationship, suggesting that improving digital access could lead to better health outcomes and reduced disparities. Out of the nine location factors tested for correlation with human development and digital inclusion, electricity access and incidence of multidimensional poverty turned out to be strongly correlated with both human development index and digital inclusion. The contribution of this paper is in illustrating that digital inclusion does in fact become a social determinant of health in improving health outcomes.