At a recent workshop organised in the frame of EHTEL’s Annual Symposium* health care managers modernising their health care systems used personas to model citizens and patients needs for digital services.
The personas used were developed by the Blueprint team of the EIP on AHA (European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing). These 12 personas cover people situated throughout the life-course, who have many and varied (mainly chronic) conditions and who live in different socio-economic and geographic settings. Understanding the situation of the personas will lead the Blueprint team on to the next step of its work, which will involve designing a set of user scenarios.
The attendees worked in groups to investigate experiences of integrated care. Up to thirty people from 18 countries participated.
Maddalena Illario, Co-Chair of the EIP on AHA Reference Sites Coordination Network commented: “Personas can be a great way to explore together the kinds of digital health and care services people need in different regions. The tools used today, including personas, can reveal important synergies and similarities in a range of settings.”
PROGRESSIVE has also focused on personas as one of several interesting co-production methods that could interest standardisation bodies. The co-production methods identified by PROGRESSIVE are written up in its guide to user co-production in standardisation.
The EHTEL workshop also covered a set of field experiences in deploying digital services in Andalucia (Spain), Puglia (Italy), and Turkey. To facilitate coaching and twinning on conditions for successful deployments, the attendees used the SCIROCCO tool. Attendees greatly benefited from their mutual exchange of knowledge, including – as a result of exploring the 12 personas – on the kinds of digital technologies that can be used to benefit older adults with a variety of health and care needs.
For related information on the tools used and experiences explored, see:
- PROGRESSIVE User Co-production Guide: https://progressivestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/PROGRESSIVE-guide-on-user-co-production_20180606.pdf
- EIP on AHA Blueprint on Digital Transformation of Health and Care for the Ageing Society: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/blueprint_en
- EIP on AHA Blueprint Personas: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/library_en
- EIP on AHA Reference Sites: https://ec.europa.eu/eip/ageing/reference-sites_en
- SCIROCCO Assessment Tool: www.scirocco-project.eu
*EHTEL is the European Health Telematics Association (www.ehtel.eu) and a partner in the PROGRESSIVE project.