A CO-DESIGN SOLUTION TO DIGITAL LITERACY IN HEALTH PROVISION

This panel will discuss what digital literacy (or e-Literacy) means in the context of health care work, its importance and how it might be attained. The panel topic is of particular importance for the conference's main theme of improved care through informatics. The discussion is informed by our studies of implementation and use of different information systems (such as e-prescribing, electronic transmission of prescriptions, and electronic health records) in healthcare organisations. Our starting point is the need to move beyond narrowly conceived IT skills and 'key-stroke' training and address a wider set of literacies, incorporating skills, capabilities, understandings and sense making activities. We are interested in how healthcare professionals (HCPs) work mediated by digital technologies and performed by individuals, in cooperation and collaboration with others and within wider institutional and inter-institutional contexts, might be facilitated by different approaches to e-Literacy. We discuss how the process of acquiring and sustaining digital health literacy can be conceptualised and facilitated. We ask questions such as what are the implications of these conceptualisations of digital health literacy for HCPs education, for training and for other activities during information system implementation and adoption? We also ask how can digital health literacy be sustained as a competency of the organisation as well as the individual?

Digital health

While digital health technologies hold potential for improving healthcare and the generation and dissemination of health information, there are many issues to be resolved in facilitating their provision and efficacy and ensuring ethical management of personal health data. In the face of high-stakes digital health initiatives, debates and controversies, eliciting the views and experiences of the diverse constituents in the digital health ecosystem is important. A digital health stakeholder workshop was held in Canberra, Australia, to address two key questions: 1) What is currently working and not working in digital health? and 2) Where should digital health go in the future? As part of a living lab approach, the 25 workshop participants from research, industry, patient and other healthcare consumer groups and government, engaged in participatory design activities directed at stimulating ideas and discussion. The design artefacts and videos generated during the workshop were thematica...

Studies in Health Technology and Informatics

The health and social care sector has experienced an optimistic turn in the last decade. There has been substantial growth in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the entire sector to identify digital methods of delivering a better level of care than before the pandemic. This paper used the Theory to Change (ToC) approach to demonstrate how the digital skills development of the health and care workforce can be achieved in specific contexts. The paper offers background on digital technologies used in healthcare and outlines the steps and methods used in developing a ToC map. The impact of the proposed ToC approach provides a measurable and predictable way to onboard the health and social care workforce into digital technologies, providing a more digitally skilled and literate workforce.

Studies in Health Technology and Informatics

Care for patients with multimorbidity and long-term complex needs is costly and with demographic changes this group is growing. The research project Dignity Care addresses how to improve the care for this patient group by studying how a conceptual shared digital care plan for complex clinical pathways can guide and support cross-organisational care teams. This paper presents the user-centred design process for the digital care plan development. Panels of patients and health care professionals will participate in co-creation user workshops and simulation of complex patients’ pathways. The main contribution from this work is recommendations for how to actively involve user groups in digital health development, applying a partly remote approach of user-centred design methodology during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Healthcare

There is a need to ensure that healthcare organisations enable their workforces to use digital methods in service delivery. This study aimed to evaluate the current level of digital understanding and ability in nursing, midwifery, and allied health workforces and identify some of the training requirements to improve digital literacy in these health professionals. Representatives from eight healthcare organizations in Victoria, Australia participated in focus groups. Three digital frameworks informed the focus group topic guide that sought to examine the barriers and enablers to adopting digital healthcare along with training requirements to improve digital literacy. Twenty-three participants self-rated digital knowledge and skills using Likert scales and attended the focus groups. Mid-range scores were given for digital ability in nursing, midwifery, and allied health professionals. Focus group participants expressed concern over the gap between their organizations’ adoption of digi...

International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence, 2010

This paper outlines and challenges expectations and promises regarding the potential of the internet and Web 2.0 for empowering patients and citizens. It focuses on literacies required to make a meaningful (to the individual) use of these technologies for health and health care related purposes. The author briefly discusses how these should be taught and concludes that these literacies, including digital literacy and health literacy, are complex and challenging to many while the empowering claims are over-stated. Traditional sources of information and advice will remain essential to maintaining quality of health care.

DIGITAL HEALTH, 2016

Human Resources for Health, 2021

Digital technologies are rapidly being integrated into a wide range of health fields. This new domain, often termed 'digital health' , has the potential to significantly improve healthcare outcomes and global health equity more broadly. However, its effective implementation and responsible use are contingent on building a health workforce with a sufficient level of knowledge and skills to effectively navigate the digital transformations in health. More specifically, the next generation of health professionals-namely youth-must be adequately prepared to maximise the potential of these digital transformations. In this commentary, we highlight three priority areas which should be prioritised in digital education to realise the benefits of digital health: capacity building, opportunities for youth, and an ethics-driven approach. Firstly, capacity building requires educational frameworks and curricula to not only be updated, but to also place an emphasis on interdisciplinary learning. Secondly, opportunities are important for youth to meaningfully participate in decision-making processes and gain invaluable practical experiences. Thirdly, training in digital ethics and the responsible use of data as a standard component of education will help to safeguard against potential future inequities resulting from the implementation and use of digital health technologies.

Frontiers in digital health, 2023

This brief article summarizes the novel thinking and rapid digital innovation in healthcare and healthcare education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in a special issue on Education and Learning for Digital Health, created by editors Morrow, Ross and Mason. It bring insights from the works of 17 world-leading clinicians, researchers and educators from Australia, Canada, the United States and Northern Ireland on topics on e-learning, blended learning, immersive virtual reality, artificial compassion, digital simulations and virtual patients, addressing how and why health professionals learn to use emerging technologies. For example, the first article explains how the use of virtual care, such as virtual examinations, clinical assessments, and remote patient monitoring, expanded during COVID-19 to enable continued access to healthcare.

Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2018

Medical professionals are increasingly assuming the role of maker and creator. At the same time, digital innovations, as part of evolving information infrastructures, are becoming increasingly prevalent in healthcare. In this paper, we adopt a Schönian approach to understand how a medical professional, who is not an IS designer by trade, engages in the design of digital practice-turning what may appear as a failed digital innovation effort into a successful design of digital practice. Our inquiry suggests three pragmatic principles that call for further investigation: (a) professionals can make a significant contribution to design work by inventing means for fact-based, reflective engagement with the situation; (b) the reorganization of work practice involves organizational design, information system design, and communication design; and (c) developing design as digital practice entails the development of fact-based design practice and must engage practical theories.