Digital health technologies are a driving force for helping citizens and health professionals address preventable risk factors associated with diseases. They can facilitate early detection and treatment and support healthy ageing. Digital health solutions are also key to support a shift in care provision by empowering citizens in accessing their personal health data and managing their own health.

Several countries in Europe have a national eHealth strategy, legislation to protect electronic patient data, and ongoing eHealth initiatives. Despite these advancements and their acceleration during the Covid-19 pandemic, a large number is left behind and less empowered to better manage their health in the era of digital transformation.

However, the recent evidence from the World Health Organisation on equity in digital health technologies indicate digital literacy as a key driver of differences in access to health care and health outcomes. Thus, enhancing digital health literacy is vital to limit health inequalities from expanding.

Both health and digital literacy are commonly conceptualized through competency-based frameworks that influence daily decisions related to health.

Digital literacy is defined as a skill of understanding and utilizing information from different digital sources. It encompasses four skills: Internet search, hypertext navigation, knowledge assembly, and

content evaluation (Gilster,1997; 2006).

Health literacy (HL) is related to people’s knowledge and competency in accessing, understanding, appraising, using and applying information relevant to health to make judgments and decisions in everyday life concerning healthcare services, health promotion and disease prevention.

Digital health literacy (dHL) is the ability to seek, find, understand, and appraise health information from electronic resources to make appropriate health decisions or solve a health problem.

IDHEAL: The ‘Improving Digital Empowerment for Active Healthy Living’ (IDEAHL) project, is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme (Grant Agreement No 101057477), https://ideahl.eu/  The IDHEAL consortium consists of 14 research and practitioner organisations in 10 European countries together with over 1,300 stakeholders especially health care professionals, policy makers, digital and (d)HL experts, and citizens.  IDEAHL will co-create, test, and evaluate an inclusive and comprehensive EU strategy on (d)HL, which can be implemented at national and regional levels.

The IDEAHL initiative is a Europewide effort that aims to create a comprehensive and inclusive EU strategy for improving (d)HL. Cocreation of health literacy policies and practices is the best way to achieve this, through engagement of stakeholders. As part of this, a network of champion practices, and pilots of promising practices will be initiated.

A map of current (d)HL at country and regional levels will also be created, using validated monitoring mechanisms identified by the initiative. In this way, IDEAHL will help empower EU citizens in using digital tools to play a more active role in managing their own health and well-being, and support innovation for person-centred care models. All this will contribute to reigning over health-related expenses to sustainable levels. Stakeholder engagement is central to the initiative to achieve these outcomes.

This strategy will involve the formulation of (d)HL-promoting policies, the recommendation and testing (d)HL-strengthening interventions, and the monitoring of valid (d)HL indicators across Europe. The target audiences of the strategy’s activities are both at the professional level (who can develop, deploy, recommend, and prescribe the use of digital health services) as well as the public level (who will make up the user-base of digital health services).

IDEAHL will create a knowledge exchange network of those identified (d)HL practices across the EU and beyond to facilitate the best performing practices as well as help improve those that may be underperforming. Successful practices (so-called “champions”) and less successful (“survivors”) will be demonstrated.

The planned EU strategy for improving (d)HL will be co-created through dedicated workshops at local level, online social media campaign and online co-creation exercises, and additional consultations e.g., survey involving more than 1,300 stakeholders identified by the IDEAHL consortium partners. These include representatives from policy makers, health care professionals, digital experts, academia, civil society organisations, citizens, and the media.

The EU strategy will improve digital empowerment and (d)HL for active healthy living of citizens in Europe. This strategy will involve the formulation of (d)HL-promoting policy targets, the recommendation and testing (d)HL-strengthening interventions, and the monitoring of valid (d)HL indicators across Europe. The target audiences of the strategy’s activities are both at the professional level (who can develop, deploy, recommend, and prescribe the use of digital health services) as well as the public level (who will make up the user-base of digital health services).

By 2024, the IDEAHL initiative will create an implementable, EU-wide strategy to enable use of (d)HL best practices and monitoring methods, using co-creation methods involving a wide range of stakeholders. Successful implementation of the EU strategy will be largely dependent on the real commitment of policy and decision-makers in the early stages of the strategy-forming process.

In this seminar we will present the following: 

- Improving Digital Empowerment for Active Healthy Living (IDEAHL). Improving digital empowerment for active healthy living of citizens in Europe through partnerships that influence policies in Europe.

- Mapping health literacy and digital health literacy in Europe through equity lenses. Key results from the scoping review.

- Development of the Global Atlas of Literacies in Health (GALH).

- Co-creation of solutions to improve digital empowerment for active healthy living of citizens in Europe

Disclaimer. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA). Neither the European Union nor the grating authority can be held responsible for them.

Speakers:

• Marta Pisano González, PhD. Head of Centered Care Service. General Direction of Care and Social Healthcare, Ministry of Health. Asturias. Spain. Improving Digital Empowerment for Active Healthy Living (IDEAHL). Improving digital empowerment for active healthy living of citizens in Europe through partnerships that influence policies in Europe. 
• Diana Schack Thoft, PhD., Associate Professor and Research manager at the Centre of Health and Applied Technology. University college of Northern Denmark. Mapping health literacy and digital health literacy in Europe through equity lenses. Key results from the scoping review.
• Kerryn Butler-Henderson, PhD., Professor, Director, Digital Health. RMIT Australia. Development of the Global Atlas of Literacies in Health (GALH).
• Beatrice Avagnina, Managing Director. Consulta Europa, Spain. Co-creation of solutions to improve digital empowerment for active healthy living of citizens in Europe.

This seminar and discussions will be moderated by Sarah Wamala Andersson, Professor of Health and Welfare technology, Mälardalen University, Sweden.