RMIT Europe is one of 14 partners in Improving digital empowerment for active healthy living (IDEAHL), a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program and coordinated by the Regional Ministry of Health of Asturias.
IDEAHL, which kicked off in May 2022, will develop a digital health strategy that promotes digital technologies and provides guidance to citizens in how to use them.
Online tools and electronic health resources have the potential to simplify interactions between patients and health professionals, help to detect and address preventable risk factors associated with diseases, and facilitate early treatment.
Despite these and other benefits, their widespread deployment has been constrained due to a lack of awareness and confidence in how to use the tools, and concerns related to the protection of sensitive electronic patient data.
To tackle such barriers, IDEAHL will use a collaborative co-creation approach to understand and address doubts and concerns, working alongside different stakeholders to develop and test online models and approaches to digital health.
More than 1,300 people representing the health and non-health sectors, civil society and patient groups as well as policy makers will be invited to take part in a 26-day program of face-to-face co-creation workshops and cross-border, online co-creation exercises.
Their feedback and inputs will feed into a new European strategy for improving digital health literacy, with a particular focus on social innovation to reduce health inequalities by ensuring that digital health tools and training are available to all members of society.
Actions from the strategy will be piloted in ten EU countries to evaluate how they work in practice and address the overarching project goal of encouraging citizens to take a more active role in the management of their own health and wellbeing.