Citizens Science and Engagement for Digital Public Health Transformation
Project ID: 2228cd1386 (You will need this ID for your application)
Research Theme: Healthcare Technologies
UCL Lead department: Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR)
Lead Supervisor: Patty Kostkova
Project Summary:
Digital Health innovations such as AI, serious games and mobile app interventions have demonstrated a great opportunities for transforming the delivery of public health in high and low income settings, in particular for early warning and response to outbreaks and emergencies such as COVID19, swine flu, ebola and zika . However, adoption, long-term usage and scale up of innovative research is lagging behind.
One of the reason is limited digital literacy and IT skills, and limited participation in novel bottom up health technologies such as citizens science and participatory surveillance, harvesting the local knowledge and needs of citizens via digital technology and providing personalized and locally appropriate information in emergencies.
Increasing engagement through serious games-based digital technologies demonstrated an opportunity for behaviour change and improvement of health outcomes in areas such as vaccines hesitancy, antimicrobial resistance, COVID-19 and others. However, long-term adoption, increased health literacy and buy-in enabling a true health system transformation remains a challenge. This is of particular importance in the WHO European region including developed counties in Western Europe as well as less developed countries from Central Asia. We need to better understand how to bridge the health digital literacy divide through citizens engagement techniques to transform public health emergencies for all.
This project is linked to UCL Centre for Digital public Health (dPHE) research initiatives and provides opportunities for students with MSc in computer science or public health, epidemiology, public health governance and policy to develop new approaches to citizens science and engagement to accelerate adoption of digital systems for preparedness and response to emergencies.