Abstract

Following the outbreak of what would become the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing measures were quickly introduced across East Asia—including drastic shelter-in-place orders in some cities—drawing on experience with the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome almost two decades ago. “Smart City” technologies and other digital tools were quickly deployed for infection control purposes, ranging from conventional thermal scanning cameras to digital tracing in the surveillance of at-risk individuals. Chatbots endowed with artificial intelligence have also been deployed to shift part of healthcare provision away from hospitals and to support a number of programmes for self-management of chronic disease in the community. With the closure of schools and adults working from home, digital technologies have also sustained many aspects of both professional and social life at a pace and scale not considered to be practicable before the outbreak. This paper considers how these new experiences with digital technologies in public health surveillance are spurring digitalization in East Asian societies beyond the conventional public health context. It also considers some of the concerns and challenges that are likely to arise with rapid digitalization, particularly in healthcare.