Planning digital health interventions: Digital collection of patient-reported measures from older adults

Gayanika Hettiarachchi Senarath, Pari Delir Haghighi, Denise O'Connor, David Snowdon, Velandai Srikanth

Abstract: Digital Health Interventions (DHIs) have great potential to improve health and healthcare delivery. However, achieving digital change in healthcare is challenging, and careful planning is needed to ensure its success. Existing approaches for planning DHIs lack attention to ‘complexity’ that considers the heterogeneity of agents (e.g. people, process, technology and new behaviours), interactions between these agents and iterative adaptations of these interactions. In this paper, we present a novel methodology to explore the planning of digital change in healthcare by utilising evidence-, theory- and enhanced person-based approaches that aim to address the limited evidence on iterative approaches to planning digital change, elicitation of wider stakeholder views and involvement of vulnerable populations in planning of digital change. We aim to apply this methodology in the context of planning digital patient-reported measures collection systems for older adults aged 65 years and above to report their health status and experiences, in a public health community rehabilitation care setting.