On Wednesday 4 March we were delighted to welcome Bob Gann, lead for widening digital participation at NHS England, to join our Heart of the Habitat breakfast meet up. We were joined by around 30 people to consider how we can avoid increasing inequality through the work of our mHealthHabitat. This is an issue that has been raised with us by many people and we were keen to think the issues through with a diverse group of people accessing services, health and care professionals, third sector, IT colleagues and commissioners.
Bob shared this fantastic set of slides with us – packed full of information about the link between digital literacy and health literacy:
In particular, Bob reminded us that those who are least likely to be online are the same people who are most likely to need health and care services. As information and services are increasingly digital, there is a need to support people to improve their digital skills. Low health literacy is closely linked to poor health outcomes. It is therefore critical to widen digital participation in order to enable people to improve their health and wellbeing.
The group had a wide ranging discussion and we haven’t captured every point. However, here is a summary of some important points that we hope to include in the mHealthHabitat programme:
Building digital in to what we do – health and care services have an opportunity to build digital literacy into their day to day work in small ways. For example, within health trainer contacts and peer support groups. Making it a small part of the day-to-day rather than sending people on stand-alone courses will help people incorporate digital into their lives in a meaningful way.
Supporting digital literacy of health and care staff – if we are going to build digital into health and care then we need staff who are comfortable and confident with digital themselves. They can then offer help and guidance to people accessing services. Digital literacy isn’t just about technology – it’s knowing how to assess the quality of information online and make good use of it. This is is an important building block of digital. We also need to give staff the digital tools and access to the Internet to help them do their jobs well.
How do we meet the needs people who can’t afford Internet and smart phones? we had a big discussion about this and considered when it might make sense to provide devices and Internet access where it would help someone manage their health and wellbeing better. There was strong support for testing this approach out. We discussed the need for public wifi in health and social care settings so that it is easy to access Internet when discussing health and wellbeing with a professional.
We considered reasons why people may choose not to go online and identified the following possible reasons:
- Concerns about privacy
- Lack of interest and motivation – don’t see the benefits.
- Finding it hard to keep up with the pace of change
- Poverty.
Any work around widening digital participation has to address people’s legitimate concerns around privacy as well as make the Internet meaningful and purposeful to each person. We need to ensure that digital isn’t the only option available and respect people’s wishes for non digital interactions. We need to make sure digital tools (such as mobile apps and websites) are well designed and easy to use. Participants welcomed NHS England’s drive to review digital tools and endorse the ones that are proven to be effective and safe.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for a fantastic conversation. We will include all the points raised within our programme and pay close attention to widening digital participation in order to improve health and wellbeing outcomes.