Constructing Digital Health Capital Index: Measuring Inequality for Techcare and Smart-Ageing in Post-COVID Hong Kong

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the demand for e-health applications, underscoring the critical importance of digital health in society. However, technological advancements have also exacerbated the digital health divide, leading to greater inequality. Previous research often neglects the transformation of online health activities into tangible health outcome.Thus, this study aims to address this gap by proposing an Extended Digital Divide Model to integrate existing literature on digital divide, digital literact, and health literacy. Based on this framework, we develop the Digital Health Capital Index, which measures individuals’ digital health capabilities across three dimensions: digital health access and usage, digital health literacy, and digital health transformative capacity. The findings reveal significant disparities in DHCI scores across SES groups. Younger individuals, residents of private housing, and those from higher-income districts tend to score higher, while older adults generally exhibit lower DHCI scores, highlighting a pronounced digital divide. The DHCI extends our understanding of digital capital, offering a novel lens to examine health inequalities in the digital age. These findings have important implications for smart aging initiatives, emphasizing the need for targeted strategies to bridge the digital health capital divide among diverse demographic groups.