Digital solutions for active healthy living

RMIT Europe has contributed to a European project aimed at empowering citizens to live a healthy and active lifestyle.

The Improving Digital Empowerment for Active Healthy Living (IDEAHL) project, which has just finished, developed a digital health strategy to promote digital technologies and guide citizens in how to use them.

RMIT Europe was one of 14 partners involved in the project, which was funded by the European Union and coordinated by the Regional Ministry of Health of Asturias, Spain.

A parent sits with their child while they have a telehealth appointment on the laptop. A doctor is on the screen talking to them.

Developing the European Digital Health Literacy Strategy

RMIT helped develop the European Digital Health Literacy Strategy, a framework providing comprehensive guidelines to improve digital health literacy in Europe and beyond.

The strategy focused on areas like health promotion, disease prevention and quality-of-life monitoring.

RMIT Europe health researcher Dr Gabriela Irrazábal said it was also about addressing inequities, such as through geographic, gender, socio-cultural and economic determinants.

“Everyone deserves to be healthy but without clear guidelines for decision makers, it’s difficult to forge a path towards a just outcome,” she said.

“Across several European countries and Australia, we worked together to create guidelines towards ensuring citizens know how to manage their own health outcomes.”

Creating an inclusive digital health literacy strategy also involved considerations for including how digital tools can effectively be used in treatment.

“But there’s no point advocating for digital solutions if people don’t know how to use them,” Irrazabal said.

“We first need to know how literate people are when it comes to healthcare and digital tools.

“Then we can promote higher levels of digital literacy for health via the interventions developed in the strategy.”

Led by the Regional Ministry of Health of Asturias, the strategy was a collaborative effort that culminated in it being presented during the project’s final conference at the European Parliament earlier this year.

RMIT's Dr Gabriela Irrazabal presented at the IDEAHL project's final conference in Brussels.

Making it easier to map and track health and digital literacy

The RMIT team lead the development of one of the first online tools displaying interactive data visualising levels of health literacy and digital health literacy.

The Global Atlas of Literacies for Health was co-designed with experts, academics, patient associations’ representatives and policy makers to help time-poor researchers quickly and accurately access evidence-based studies sorted by country.

“We included complex data health literacy studies into an easy-to-use atlas to promote policy making in this area,” Irrazabal said.

“With a better understanding of these literacy levels, work to improve them can be better targeted towards the often-marginalised groups who need it most.”

Researchers at RMIT worked with geospatial mapping company dMap to consolidate and visualise the complex data in an easy-to-access interactive map, with raw data download capability and a best practice and policy resource list.

It was an effort spearheaded by digital health expert Professor Kerryn Butler-Henderson, now an adjunct professor in RMIT’s STEM College and Head of School at Charles Sturt University.

The World Health Organisation sees improving health literacy as a crucial step in realising the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, aimed at ending poverty in all its forms.

Screenshot of the Global Atlas of Literacies for Health

Looking to the future

Although the IDEAHL project has finished, its partners are planning future collaborations, including a spin-off focused on improving equitable access to digital tools related to the EU Accessibility Act 2025.

“Though the digitalisation process in healthcare is well-developed, more actions are needed in terms of accessibility,” Irrazabal said.

“Our work isn’t done – we’re always looking for ways to continue empowering people to live their best lives.”

The Global Atlas of Literacies for Health can be accessed via rmit.eu/galh.

Researchers are conducting a collaborative data collection process with different stakeholders for future updates of the atlas, as part of the project’s sustainability plan.

The atlas considers information sources derived from scoping reviews conducted between 2017 and July 2022. If community members are aware of any scientific publications, best practices, policies, interventions or initiatives related to health or digital health literacy published after this period, they can let the team know.

IDEAHL project coordinator: Consejeria de Salud Regional Ministry of Health of Asturias (Spain). See all collaborating partners: ideahl.eu/consortium

Story: Aеden Ratcliffе

Health

16 July 2024

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16 July 2024

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Digital solutions for active healthy living