CO-CREATING VALUE-BASED CARE: VALUECARE WORKSHOP IN THE EUROPEAN WEEK OF ACTIVE HEALTH AGEING
Monday, 18th October
During the first day of the European Week of Active and Healthy Ageing, some partners of the ValueCare team organised the workshop “co-creating value-based care” with the main purpose of raising awareness about the benefits of implementing co-design and co-creation processes when developing digital products for health and care; but also to share with participants some outcomes of the co-design activities implemented in ValueCare project and learn from them experiences and lessons learnt.
Many digital products and services that are being developed for deployment and implementation in the health and care system do not take into consideration all the needs, views and preferences of the target groups (e.g. older people, caregivers, health and social care practitioners, and managers). Older people are a particular group who are often not fully involved during design processes. That was the reason to focus the workshop on an overview of co-design and co-creation methods and mechanisms to enable interaction with different target groups to maximise the possibilities of new products and services to contribute towards sustaining health and care systems.
The workshop started with a brief introduction to co-creation methods with older people by iDROPS – Femke Verthé. Then the ValueCare project was presented by EMC as project coordinator – Lizhen Ye, and in particular the engagement strategies and co-design activities implemented up to now by ISRAA – Oscar Zanutto as coordinator of the work package where those activities are realised.
Then, IFIC – Niamh Lennox-Chhugani – explained the methodology to guide the three parallel sessions where the participants were randomly assigned to discuss about the co-design approach when creating a new digital for health. The three parallel sessions were moderated and supported by ValueCare partners – Natalia Allegretti from ECHAlliance supported by Oscar Zanutto from ISRAA coordinated the room 1; Nhu Tram from AGE Platform Europe supported by Lizhen Ye from EMC moderated the room 2; and Sofia Ortet from Caritas Coimbra supported by Niamh Lennox-Chhugani from IFIC leaded the room 3. In the three parallel sessions, participants were able to use iterative tools to discuss the following questions:
- Have you been already involved in co-design processes?
- Can you share with the group practical tools and experiences on co-design digital solutions for health?
- How to have the co-design process as a must in the creation of digital solutions addressing health and care?
- New tools and procedures arised from the pandemic situation: what did we learn in terms of innovative practices?
After the parallel sessions, participants were redirected to the plenary session where Mireia Ferri – Kveloce I+D+i – moderated the wrap-up session allowing the supporters of the parallel sessions to share with the audience the main issues discussed in each parallel group. In this sense, it is worth to mention that most of the participants in the three discussion groups have already been involved in co-design/co-creation process, so this is not new for them. Some key aspects when implementing this methodology were highlighted: listen carefully, design for but with end-users at the core, good communication skills, and education. Most of the activities they have used are focus groups and world cafes; but also questionnaires, mood boards, design thinking tools, scenarios, prototypes… Finally, the digital literacy of older people was pointed out as a main concern when applying co-design.
Approximately 40 participants were engaged in the workshop and got a taste of participatory methods, tools and applications that can be used within the broad health and care system and their organisations, with a special focus on psychosocial wellbeing of older people and their local contexts.