The University of Manchester’s Digital Futures platform, in collaboration with the Christabel Pankhurst Institute, hosts a seminar series with speakers from different disciplines who have done exemplary work on understanding, identifying, or addressing digital health equities.

Seminars are online and happen bi-monthly on the 2nd Wednesday of the month from 1-2pm. You can find information and recordings from previous talks below, and information on upcoming events on the digital health equities seminars page.

December 2023 | Developing a digitally inclusive falls prevention program (KOKU) for older adults from culturally diverse and underserved communities

Speaker: Professor Emma Stanmore, The University of Manchester

Watch the recording on YouTube: Developing a digitally inclusive falls prevention program (KOKU) for older adults from culturally diverse and underserved communities.

November 2023 | Developing a minimum digital living standard for households with children

Speaker

Simeon Yates, University of Liverpool

Summary

This talk presents the development and initial use of a Minimum Digital Living Standard (MDLS) for Households with Children, drawing on a project based on significant prior work on digital inclusion and Minimum Income Standards (MIS). The MDLS adapted the consensus-based methodology used to develop the MIS. Over three iterative rounds, groups consisting of purposively sampled participants who are demographically similar but socio-economically different developed a consensus MDLS definition through:

• consideration of what it means to be digitally included, and construction of case studies
• identification of the digital goods, skills and services needed in case study households

Further groups were undertaken to assess specificities around age (young people 16-18) and region (Wales). A UK-wide survey operationalised the MDLS to assess links with social, economic, cultural, and digital factors. This was an in-person quota sample of 1500 households, selected to represent the UK population of families with children.

The talk reports on the development of the MDLS and the initial results from the survey.  Overall, the project seeks to understand variation in needs, the specific challenges in families meeting, and the consequences of not meeting, the MDLS. As a future step the survey data, along with other relevant secondary data, will be integrated into a geodemographic. Qualitative work is ongoing with representatives of families who are below the MDLS to explore issues arising from falling below the standard.  The work has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation, Welsh Government, and Nominet.

Speaker bio

Simeon Yates is the Professor of Digital Culture in the Department of Communications and Media at the University of Liverpool and Joint Director of the Digital Media and Society Research Institute. Simeon has undertaken research on the social, political, and cultural impacts of digital media for over three decades. 

For the last two decades he has had a focus on projects that address issues of digital inclusion and exclusion. In this work Simeon engages with both academic, charity, and government colleagues to develop policy and interventions to support digital inclusion. This includes working with the UK’s Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the UK’s media regulator Ofcom, and the Welsh Government as well as charity organisations such as the Good Things Foundation, Cwmpas in Wales and SCVO in Scotland.

In 2017 he was seconded to DCMS to act as research lead for the Digital Culture team – helping to develop the first UK “Digital Culture” policy. Simeon is a Member Greater Manchester City Region Mayoral Digital Inclusion Action Network, and he is an appointed expert advisor to DCMS and Ofcom. 

Simeon recently completed a project exploring citizens’ data literacy and is leading the project to explore a “Minimum Digital Living Standard” for UK households – both funded by the Nuffield Foundation. He is also deputy director of the DSTL Defence Data Research Centre and one of the leads for the ESRC Digital Footprints Programme Strategic Advisory Team.

Watch the recording on YouTube: Developing a minimum digital living standard for households with children.

October 2023 | CaFI Digital: developing digital tools to support a culturally adapted family intervention with African and Caribbean people diagnosed with psychosis, and their families

Speakers

Dawn Edge & Pauline Whelan, University of Manchester

Summary

People from African and Caribbean backgrounds in the UK, including those of Mixed heritage, are much more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis than White British people. They are more likely to be ‘sectioned’ under the Mental Health Act, experience poorer care from mental health services and rarely offered psychological therapies.

When these ‘talking treatments’ are offered, they rarely address people’s culture and lived experiences. In this talk, Dawn and Pauline will discuss the co-design and development of “CaFI Digital” a digital tool to support a Culturally-adapted Family Intervention (CaFI) with African and Caribbean people diagnosed with psychosis, and their families.

Further details can be found on the CaFI website.

Speaker bio

Dawn Edge is a Professor of Mental Health & Inclusivity at the Division of Psychology & Mental Health and the University’s Academic Lead for Equality, ‘Race’, Religion & Belief. Dr Pauline Whelan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Division of Informatics, Imaging and Data Sciences at the University and a Co-Director of the GM Digital Research Unit at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust. She works across digital health projects with a particular focus on digital mental health.

Watch the recording on YouTube: CaFI Digital: developing digital tools to support a culturally adapted family intervention with African and Caribbean people diagnosed with psychosis, and their families.

September 2023 | Supporting digital inclusion in healthcare

Speaker

Pritesh Mistry, King’s Fund

Summary

Digital technologies can improve health and care services for staff and patients, but there is no guarantee that everyone will be able to take advantage of these improvements. This presentation will give a summary of the findings from The Kings Fund report on digital exclusion including the experience and expectations of the public alongside the work being undertaken in the NHS.

You can find the report here: Moving from exclusion to inclusion in digital health and care.

Speaker bio

Pritesh works in the policy team where he focuses on how digital tools and technologies can improve health and care. He is particularly passionate about using evidence-based digital technology as an enabler to improve quality of care and outcomes while critically assessing buzzwords and technology as a silver bullet. Pritesh combines his understanding of technology with the broader picture of the essential ingredients needed for digital change to have an impact. This encompasses culture, unmet need, infrastructure, change management and knowledge all to improve quality, inequalities and outcomes.

Before joining the Fund, Pritesh led the innovation activity at the Royal College of General Practitioners encompassing system change, entrepreneurship, grassroots innovation and horizon-scanning. Before this he worked at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust helping to bring together clinicians and patients with research and technology to improve the care and outcomes of people with life-debilitating conditions such as heart failure.

Watch the recording on YouTube: Supporting digital inclusion in healthcare.

June 2023 | Are clinicians the forgotten people of digital health inequities?

Speaker

Dr Junaid Hussain, Man Confidence

Summary

We all know of inequities in healthcare and in digital health and digital health therapeutics. These are usually looked at from the angle of the patient (race, gender, age, wealth etc.). Companies that create digital health products tend to retrospectively work on resolving these inequities, often due to protest from patients or their advocates.

Dr Hussain argues clinicians who are using these interventions with their patients, are often an even later after-thought in their design and implementation. Dr Hussain discusses the importance of inclusivity of clinicians in digital health product design and implementation, to both avoid further inequity, but also to enhance effectiveness of interventions in the first place.

Speaker bio

Dr Junaid Hussain is a practicing primary care clinician based in Birmingham in the UK, having completed his GP training in Manchester. He is a digital health advisor to companies around the world and best known for moaning on LinkedIn about issues he sees in digital health products and their effectiveness.

He has worked as a clinician around the UK and in Saudi Arabia, including setting up from scratch a primary care training programme in a desert city. He has a strong interest in making digital health interventions more effective. He also has his own start-up Man Confidence  – focussing on Men’s Mental Health which is currently receiving support through The Hill Pre-Seed Programme (Oxford University Hospitals).

Watch the recording on YouTube: Are clinicians the forgotten people of digital health inequities?

April 2023 | Ethics of robotics and AI: responsible research and innovation within applied healthcare technologies and beyond

Speaker

Dr Emily Collins (Northeastern University)

Summary

Robotic technologies for rehabilitating motor impairments have been the focus of intensive research and capital investment for more than 30 years. However, these devices have failed to convincingly demonstrate greater restorative function compared to conventional therapy.

In this talk, Emily will discuss issues that arise between technologies such as this, but also across multiple domains, wherein we see similar patterns of disconnect between the design and development of technology and its subsequent deployment in the real-world. What factors change between these two contexts that can lead to poor uptake of robotics upon deployment? How can we mitigate this? And why are the answers to these questions so important for sustainable practice, and responsible resource management?

Speaker bio

Emily is an interdisciplinary robotics researcher. She is an Associate Research Scientist at the Institute for Experiential Robotics at Northeastern University, a British Psychological Society Chartered Psychologist, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester in the Department of Computer Science.

Her key research themes include trustworthiness and verification; responsibility and accountability; and the centrality of human psychology and socio-political factors to effective RAI deployment in the real world. 

Watch the recording on YouTube: Ethics of robotics and AI: responsible research and innovation within applied healthcare technologies and beyond.

March 2023 | Digital health interventions in ethnic minority populations before and after the pandemic

Speaker

Professor Ami Banerjee (UCL)

Summary

Digital health interventions are increasingly used and widely touted as “game-changing” in improving healthcare delivery and access, but is this the case? Ethnic minorities, long recognised to have worse health outcomes in long-term conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, may benefit from such interventions.

In the NIHR-funded DISC (Digital Inequalities in South Asians with Cardiometabolic disease) Study, Amitava Banerjee and his team have been investigating how people of South Asian backgrounds use digital health interventions before and during the pandemic. In this talk, Professor Banerjee will explore implications for research, practice and policy in digital health in ethnic minority populations beyond the pandemic.

Speaker bio

Amitava Banerjee is Professor in Clinical Data Science at the University College London, and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the University College London Hospitals and Barts Health NHS Trusts.

Also, he is Vice-President (Digital, Communications and Marketing) of the British Cardiovascular Society and Senior Advisor to the World Heart Federation Emerging Leaders Programme. His interests span data science, cardiovascular disease, global health, training and evidence-based healthcare.

Watch the recording on YouTube: Digital health interventions in ethnic minority populations before and after the pandemic.

February 2023 | Equity-focused implementation of virtual primary health care: key insights and future directions from Canada

Speakers

Dr Jay Shaw and Simone Shahid (University of Toronto)

Summary

In Canada, the urgency of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic led to a patchwork of funding for virtual care, resulted in the rapid implementation of virtual services, and left organizations with little opportunity to establish strong foundations for equitable virtual care.

We will present the findings of a scoping review of reviews led by Budhwani et al. (2022) that synthesized review-level evidence regarding the most salient challenges for structurally marginalized communities to access virtual care and identified strategies to improve access to, uptake of, and engagement with virtual care for these communities.

We will then present our findings from two collections of case studies conducted with a subset of health care organizations across Canada to describe how health equity was neglected or considered in the implementation and delivery of virtual care. We will conclude the presentation with some key insights and recommendations on how to support an equitable and sustainable approach to virtual care delivery.

Speaker bio

Jay Shaw is the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Responsible Health Innovation and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto. Jay has a cross-appointment to the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation where he supervises research-focused graduate students. He serves as Research Director of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Ethics & Health at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, and is adjunct Scientist at the Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care.

Simone Shahid is a Research Coordinator at the Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care. In her current role, she focuses on innovative models of community-based care, inequities in digital health care, and their implications on policy and the health care system.

Watch the recording on YouTube: Equity-focused implementation of virtual primary health care: key insights and future directions from Canada.

January 2023 | Tackling bias and inequities in health and genomic data

Speaker

Dr Maxine Mackintosh (Genomics England)

Summary

As data and digital technology are now being used in all aspects of research, innovation and healthcare, Maxine will discuss the intersection of data science, health and equity, illustrated by the inequities rife in genomics.

Studies of human genetics have largely focused on populations from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) countries which has resulted genomic insights that are not generalizable to all populations. Most studies, trials and papers conclude with a call to action to recruit and use more diverse genomes, and yet the proportion of non-European ancestries in genomic studies is diminishing.

To address this gap, we must work across the whole pipeline of genomic research and health care delivery, from the populations we work with and the data we collect, to the analyses we carry out and the availability of genetic testing. This talk will cover the complex challenges taking an end-to-end approach to diversifying health and genomic data involves, and what we might do to reduce bias in our data-driven systems in precision medicine.

Speaker bio

Maxine is the Programme Lead for Diverse Data at Genomics England, an initiative which aims to improve the representativeness of genetic datasets and fairness of genomic insights. She is also the Co-Founder of two communities: (a) One HealthTech – a global distributed community supporting diversity in health innovation; (b) Data Science for Health Equity.

Watch the recording on YouTube: Tackling bias and inequities in health and genomic data.

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