Digital Health Literacy: A brief overview of the IC-Health project Stephan Van den Broucke Public Hearing “Digital Health Literacy” European Economic and Social Committee Brussels, 30 January 2019

Informed health decisions Decisions on health that are based on adequate knowledge about the likely benefits and risks, and consistent with one’s personal values and preferences Require a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications, and future consequences of interventions Not so much a matter of finding information about health, but rather a question of finding out where to look for information whether the information sources that are accessed give adequate and useful information whether the health information sources are reliable

Health Literacy « A person’s knowledge, motivation and competences to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information in order to make judgments and take decisions in everyday life concerning healthcare, disease prevention and health promotion to maintain or improve quality of life during the life course» Sørensen et al., Health literacy and public health: A systematic review and integration of definitions and models. BMC Public Health. 2012;12:80

Use of Health information sources (Belgium) Avalosse et al (2017) Education Santé, 338, 2-7.

Digital health literacy Refers to the “meaning-making” of health information mediated by new technologies web resources, smartphone, Wiki, … Increasing reliance on ITC for health information offers both opportunities and challenges opportunities: easy access to information in real time challenge: patients with lower health literacy are less likely to use digital health tools than those with high health literacy Addressing digital health literacy involves: Building digital skills and knowledge about health information and resources Designing health IT tools that are navigable for less health literate patients distinction between ease-of-use and usefulness: more health-literate users are able to navigate digital health tools yet appreciate simplicity

An EU funded project (Horizon2020) Countries involved are Spain, Italy, Belgium, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Denmark Aims to improve the digital health literacy of European citizens Project actions Establish Communities of Practice on digital health literacy Organize the co-creation of 35 MOOCs each one addressing a specific population cohort (children, adolescents, pregnant and lactating women, elderly and people affected by diabetes in 8 languages (English, French, Italian, Danish, German, Swedish, Dutch and Spanish) Test the MOOCs and assess their impact on health literacy, digital health literacy and health self-management Advance the understanding of digital health literacy and of how it can be used to improve health outcomes. https://ichealth.eu/contact/

Process

Results The co-creation approach enabled 780 people from the selected target groups to be directly involved in the process of co-creation and testing the online courses. The resulting MOOCs developed in each country differ in content and presentation, but use the same four course structure representing the dimensions of DHL (accessing, understanding, appraising and applying internet-based health information)

Results (continued) The MOOC focusing on DHL for diabetic patients https://ichealth-moocs.eu/ https://ichealth-moocs.eu/course/view.php?id=33 Evaluation shows that the MOOC strengthens the patients’ competences to access, understand and use accurate and reliable information to make well-informed health decisions

Conclusions There is a need to better define the concept of DHL, and to develop more robust measures of DHL, covering the different facets and aspects of the construct MOOCs focusing on DHL can help to enhance peoples’ skills to use ICT for health-related purposes