TY - JOUR T1 - Challenges and opportunities in employing digital health to address self-management needs of people with NCDs in India JF - BMJ Innovations JO - BMJ Innov DO - 10.1136/bmjinnov-2020-000620 SP - bmjinnov-2020-000620 AU - Nachiket Gudi AU - Uday N Yadav AU - Oommen John AU - Ruth Webster Y1 - 2021/09/12 UR - http://innovations.bmj.com/content/early/2021/09/12/bmjinnov-2020-000620.abstract N2 - The WHO declared COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020.1 On 22 March 2020, the Government of India imposed the ‘Janata Curfew’ to enforce rapid physical distancing measures and prepare the health system to reduce the spread of COVID-19. This lockdown was repeated three times until 17 May 2020, adversely affecting large sectors of people due to lack of access to health services and staff for usual medical care.2 Evidence shows that people living with non-communicable diseases (PLWNCDs) in India are presenting less to health facilities and also there are denial of healthcare services under the nation’s lockdown.3 4 PLWNCDs were not able to see their physicians in a regular consultation, and access to lab services was limited as many of these labs were converted to COVID-19 testing centres. Access to regular counselling sessions and healthy lifestyle behaviours were affected as PLWNCDs were forced to limit their activity.3 They were also unable to secure healthy foods and had limited access to preventive or health promotion services owing to strict lockdown. A WHO survey from 2020 highlighted the disruption of NCD services for diabetes, cancer treatment and cardiovascular emergencies thereby urging countries to promote innovations to address an emerging tsunami of NCDs.5 The ongoing pandemic has had well-documented economic, sociocultural and systemic impacts which have been well debated in the press and academic literature, but there is also growing concern of the effect on health for PLWNCDs and is termed as the syndemic effect of COVID-19.6With an increasing burden of NCDs in resource-constraint settings, self-management of PLWNCDs has been gaining attention. The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent impacts on healthcare service availability are unlikely to resolve soon. This is true for high-income countries (HICs) and even more so … ER -