The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated that digital technologies can play an important and transformative role in the way we think about and deliver care services. They have the potential to widen access to support for mental and physical health, to make services more efficient and effective, and to offer greater choice for patients that goes beyond conventional delivery models. However, the success of digital healthcare delivery depends on understanding and bringing together the diverse perspectives and motivations of a number of different stakeholders, as well as meeting all the necessary legal, ethical and performance standards. This is rarely a straightforward process, even for the most experienced and well-resourced development team.
The Pitch-In programme at the University of Sheffield, in collaboration with Mindwave Ventures, will be hosting a series of 4 webinars in January and February 2021 to share knowledge and experiences of digital health innovation. These webinars are intended for anyone with an interest in commissioning, developing and delivering novel digital health interventions, or who wishes to gain a better understanding of the digital health landscape in the UK.
Pitch-In (Promoting the Internet of Things via Collaboration between HEIs and Industry), sponsored by Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund, brings together the universities of Sheffield, Cambridge, Newcastle and Oxford to stimulate collaboration and knowledge exchange related to Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. IoT, and digital technology more widely, has the potential to influence many aspects of our health and social care systems and practices. Within Pitch-In we are interested in what we can do to ensure that IoT contributes to building the ‘right’ sort of sustainable systems that will meet our care needs over the longer term.
Wed 27/01 10.00-11.30am - Session 1: 'Discovery' of user needs in digital health – Why bother?
Wed 03/02 10.00-11.30am - Session 2: Designing and developing digital health technologies – How to forge a partnership between academia, NHS and industry that really works.
Wed 10/02 10.00-11.30am - Session 3: Evidence and evaluation – How to design digital health tools with evaluation in mind and gather evidence of impact.
Wed 17/02 10.00-11.30am - Session 4: Onboarding and implementation – How to acquire and retain users of digital health technologies.
The webinar sessions are presented as a series to give a holistic overview of digital healthcare technology development. While each session is intended to be interesting and useful in its own right, you are strongly encouraged to attend the whole series to get a full and rounded view of the development process. The sessions will be chaired by Dr Victoria Betton (Mindwaves Chief Innovations Officer, former founder of MHabitat, an NHS hosted digital healthcare consultancy), with a panel of expert speakers. There will be an opportunity for questions during the sessions.
