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Objective
The overall objective of DigiCare will be to enrich older people’s ability for individual self-management, by developing their basic digital skills and competences required to access health information and services.
A digital educational intervention will be designed and implemented, which will target the parallel improvement of digital literacy and health literacy in populations over 50 years old in Europe. It will make them more resilient and confident in their contact with digital tools, and self-reliant in accessing the digital health services provided by their government. It will also give them access to relevant and personalised health information.
Education in digital technologies is a determining factor of digital literacy, which is nowadays necessary to access health services.
Lack of digital literacy, which is higher in older people, is a factor for discrimination of access to health.
Therefore, the intervention also prioritizes the inclusion of the older population groups to digital education, as well as improvement of accessibility of adult education.
More specifically, DigiCare’s objectives are the following:
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Development of tutorials for using specific digital health services: Descriptive tutorials on accessing and using the digital health tools of their country. These will include specific important processes like viewing their health records and booking a vaccine appointment. The steps of each process will be clearly delineated and the user will be able to check each step as completed to move to the next one, until they successfully complete the process.
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Health literacy development: According to the user’s age and condition, the platform will offer personalized modules with health information, focusing on well-being, disease prevention, monitoring and treatment. They will also be able to access information on specific issues that may interest them.
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Digital literacy development: A person’s level of digital literacy is inversely linked with their level of anxiety around tools and services based on information technologies (Lee C, Huang M., 2014). Often, poor development and lack of human- centered design in governmental digital tools strengthen older people’s negative attitudes towards digital technology.
Therefore, DigiCare will in addition aim to decrease discomfort and anxiety around using digital tools and modify older people’s attitudes towards them.
This will be done in the following ways:
a. Offering tips that target how the users perceive what’s on the screen, and their mindset while trying to navigate a platform, in order to make things clearer and decrease frustration of not knowing how to start interacting with a tool.
b. Showcasing common issues that may arise while using a digital tool, and what to do to solve them. This will extend to specific known issues of the digital health tools of their countries.
