What can health and care innovators do to design out exclusion?
Design all health and care technology (and associated information) to be fully accessible and useable by including target population in the user design and development.
Ensure the technology is designed to be as easy to access and interact with as possible for all health and care service users, and workforce. This includes:
Meeting (and where possible exceeding) all accessibility and usability standards.
Reducing the literacy, digital, cognitive and personal skills that will be necessary to access and interact in this digital health and care service/pathway/technology.
Ensuring all the service/pathway/technology information that is public facing is accessible, written in plain language, and is translatable.
Moving towards single sign-on (SSO) where users are asked to enter their login credentials one time to access all health and care related applications.
Minimizing the specification and data requirements where possible. Consider how critical information/basic functionalities available without the internet connection/with low bandwidth.
Consider how to meet requirements for service users with no/limited/unsuitable access and those who are unable to afford the relevant technology.
Design support into the service/pathway/technology (digital prompts/personal support.
Feedback to service users when they enter data, so they know this has been reviewed and if they need to take action.
Routinely measure:
access and usage data of digital technologies,
service user experience and satisfaction in relation to the service, pathway, technology and
clinical outcomes including safety.
Be transparent about what happens to data, data security, and how health and care data can be used to benefit the individual.
At the same time be aware of overwhelming people with information - some people will trust the NHS and will be burdened by too much information. Others will want access to the details.
Ensure service users can easily feedback any issues, concerns, adverse events, complaints.
Collate and respond to feedback and any issues raised.
The Digital Inclusion Framework has been developed in the context of health and care system. We are currently investigating how the framework can be used by digital innovators. Our preliminary findings show that framework can help in:
assessing the inclusivity of current digital health and care digital products and services and
designing new inclusive digital products and services.
THE CORE VERSION OF THE FRAMEWORK provides an overview of the enablers and facilitators of digital inclusion on every stage of the digital health service user journey.
THE EXTENDED AND INTERACTIVE VERSION OF THE FRAMEWORK includes the recommendations for mitigating against each digital inclusion barrier.
We are currently developing the implementation tools that will support the practical application of digital inclusion framework in the context of designing and reviewing digital products and services.