The need for effective communication has been very apparent in managing global health during the COVID-19 pandemic [1]. In addition to the acute challenges of the crisis, healthcare providers find themselves in a constantly changing environment, having to manage patient concerns about unknown long-term effects and decisions such as building upon telehealth strategies. To address these challenges, there is an urgent need to develop adaptive communication strategies that support healthcare professionals and patients in the continuously developing new normal.
Collaborative design (co-design) offers a powerful set of tools to develop such strategies in a user-centred, needs-driven and outcome-focussed way. At its core, co-design revolves around fostering an exchange between public and professional stakeholders, traditionally depending on in-person, creative exercises to build rapport and break down barriers [2]. Through this exchange, co-design helps to develop services that reflect end-users’ shared needs and improve quality of the service, satisfaction and engagement with the service [3].
Social distancing has necessitated an abrupt move to remote, usually digital, platforms in this type of interactive research. This shift introduces obvious challenges for the hands-on exercises of co-design, as well as barriers to participation for people without access to Internet and limited digital literacy levels. However, we argue that researchers and healthcare professionals should also consider the opportunities that remote collaborative work could offer to help make aspects of public and patient participation in health communication research more inclusive.
Not being bound to a physical location (“distributed”) and specific time (“asynchronous”) allows patients and healthcare providers to contribute to service design on their own terms. Reducing the need for travel and specific time commitments could help to give voice to currently underrepresented patient groups, such as those who are restricted by mobility issues, work commitments, carer duties or travel from remote, rural areas. Indeed, flexibility has been recognized as a key principle to successfully engage vulnerable groups in co-design [4].
Tapping into online communities allows researchers to meet patients and caregivers where they are at, building on pre-established relationships among members, which could help to encourage trust in the engagement process [5]. Unlike conventional co-design work, remote participation could also make it easier for participants to fade in and out of the process, increasing the pool of potential collaborators. In addition, the reduced cost of remote workshops provides researchers with more opportunity for repeated engagement, potentially promoting more sustainable public involvement with more fitting outcomes [6].
Moving forward, it will be key to limit the effects of potentially excluding people by not solely focussing on digital platforms, but to also use other remote strategies. This will require the kind of creative problem-solving that co-design originates from in its long history of participatory methods and evaluation of novel approaches. For meaningful engagement with underrepresented public and patient groups, we need to move beyond a literal translation of co-design tools to digital platforms. Instead, we need to work towards a suitable interpretation of co-design principles to foster the environment needed for genuine co-creation of health communication strategies.
References
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