December 2022 | Assessing and addressing the impact of pain self-reporting on health equity

Watch the recording on YouTube: Assessing and addressing the impact of pain self-reporting on health equity.

Speaker: Syed Mustafa Ali, The University of Manchester

In this talk, Mustafa will describe how inequalities in pain prevalence, treatment, and outcomes may be addressed by developing equitable and cross-culturally acceptable digital pain self-reporting tools. He will use his work on the Manchester Digital Pain Manikin as an example.

Speaker bio

Mustafa is a research associate in health informatics at the Centres for Epidemiology Versus Arthritis and Health Informatics in the University of Manchester. Before joining the University, he designed, monitored and evaluated public health interventions in Pakistan for more than 10 years. In his current role, he focuses on digital collection of patient-generated health data. As a continuation of his past work on reducing health inequalities, he aims to harness digital patient-generated data to improve the health outcomes of culturally diverse populations.

November 2022 | Digital public goods platforms for development: the challenge of scaling

Watch the recording on YouTube: Digital public goods platforms for development: the challenge of scaling.

Speakers: Professor Brian Nicholson and Dr Johan Ivar Sæbø

In this talk, Johan and Brian will talk about the idea of digital global public good and will articulate their understanding of it. They will share their experience of examining the development of DHIS2, a global health platform inspired by public goods, and will discuss paradoxes that would arise in the scaling process. They found that the scaling dynamics played out differently at the macro and micro levels, giving rise to the following paradoxes: 

• Addition of new functionalities to cater to the universe of users across the world (macro level) works counter to the needs of users in particular locations (micro level); 
• Responsiveness to the requests of the donors with a global view (macro level) distorts the production process, as the voices of users, situated in remote locations in developing countries, are not adequately heard; 
• The system needs to be simultaneously relevant across the global (macro level) and the local (micro level), when the former calls for decontextualization and the later (re)contextualization. 

You can read more about it in their recent publication.

Speaker bio

Dr. Johan Ivar Sæbø, is an Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has for long worked with health information systems strengthening, in particular, related to the Health Information Systems Project (HISP) in the Global South. His interests concern how to improve decentralized information use in the health sector, and how this can be supported with appropriate technology.

Dr. Brian Nicholson is Professor of Information Systems at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester and since 2018 adjunct professor in the Health Information System Project group at the University of Oslo. Since 1995, he has been involved in teaching, research and consultancy projects in the broad area of ICT for development including global outsourcing of software and other business processes. Recent work has focussed on digital platforms and the Oslo HISP project conceptualising the health surveillance platform DHIS2 as a global public good.  

October 2022 | What role can algorithmic impact assessments play in mitigating digital healthcare inequalities?

Watch the recording on YouTube: What role can algorithmic impact assessments play in mitigating digital healthcare inequalities?

Speaker: Lara Groves (Ada Lovelace Institute)

In this talk, Lara will talk about the algorithmic impact assessments (AIAs), which are an emerging mechanism for assessing possible societal impacts of a technology before it’s put into use.

Their proponents see them as a promising tool for making developers of data-driven technologies – including artificial intelligence – accountable by those affected by them. As use of AI becomes more ubiquitous in health and care service delivery, there is also a pressing need for robust oversight of these technologies to ensure they are safe, ethical and do not exacerbate existing health inequalities.

In partnership with the NHS AI Lab, the Ada Lovelace Institute explored whether an algorithmic impact assessment could be used in a healthcare data access context, and whether they could support the NHS goal of maximising the benefits and minimising the risks of AI in healthcare. In this talk, Lara will present our seven-step process, and consider how an algorithmic impact assessment might help translate AI ethics principles into practice and mitigate against digital health inequalities.

Speaker bio

Lara is a Researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute, the London and Brussels-based research institute with a mission to make data and AI work for people and society. Her research interests fall at the intersection of tech ethics, policy and society, with a sustained focus on methods and tools for translating ethical AI principles into on-the-ground practice.

September 2022 | Collaborating to ensure digital health equity – the Health Equity Impact Assessment Tool

Watch the recording on YouTube: Collaborating to ensure digital health equity – the Health Equity Impact Assessment Tool.

Speaker: Allison Crawford (UoToronto)

The rise of digital health has created exciting opportunities to increase access to health interventions and care; however, it has also revealed the persistence of inequities in access to healthcare, and has even created new barriers. Attention to digital health equity is necessary to ensure that all citizens are advantaged by developments in health technology.

In this talk, Allison will speak about:

• Continuum of social determinants of health and digital determinants of health.
• Digital health equity barriers and facilitators across different populations, including intersectionality.
• A new and practical tool to appraise and improve digital health equity, the Health Equity Impact Assessment, Digital Health Supplement.

Speaker bio

Allison Crawford, MD, PhD is the Director of Virtual Care at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and the Chief Medical Officer of the Canada Suicide Prevention Service. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. HeART Lab is the home for her community-based, arts-engaged research.

July 2022 | What factors have impacted on older people’s (75+) access/experience of public services during COVID-19? A rapid evidence review and series of qualitative interviews with older adults

Watch the recording on YouTube: What factors have impacted on older people’s (75+) access/experience of public services during COVID-19?

Speakers: Dr Annemarie Money and Dr Alex Hall, The University of Manchester

This talk will provide an overview of both phases of the research project; firstly, the rapid review which investigates the key issues related to access to digital technologies for older adults identified in published and grey literature; secondly, emerging themes from the interviews conducted with older adults in Greater Manchester exploring their access to and experiences of digital public services during the pandemic.

Speaker bios

Dr Annemarie Money is a Research Fellow in the Applied Research Collaboration – Greater Manchester (ARC-GM), working on the Healthy Ageing theme. She has been working at the University since 2007 and is a mixed methods researcher with a background in the social and health sciences. Her work covers many disciplines such as sociology, gerontology, epidemiology, ageing and work, and public health. Her current research interests include healthy ageing and physical activity, menopause and physical activity, digital participation, and ageing workers.

Dr Alex Hall is a Research Fellow based in the Healthy Ageing Research Group (HARG) and the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Older People & Frailty. His research interests relate to gerontology, dementia and palliative care, in particular, he is interested in the organisation and delivery of older adults’ health and social care, development and implementation of health technologies, and later life finances.

June 2022 | SMARThealth – Personalised digital management of cardiovascular diseases in low-middle income countries: personal survival, community engagement and public outcome

Watch the recording on YouTube: SMARThealth – Personalised digital management of cardiovascular diseases in low-middle income countries.

Speaker: Dr Gindo Tampubolon, The University of Manchester

In this talk, Gindo will talk about his ongoing research on deploying a multifaceted intervention with a digital heart (SMARThealth) that has been bearing fruits in personal survival, novel community engagement and improved public health policy. He describes the initial pragmatic trial results, its research extension and scaling up in rural Indonesia today.

Speaker bio

Gindo is lecturer in global health in the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. He is also the deputy director of Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Doctoral college. Gindo’s work focuses on how different digital technologies deliver varying benefits to different groups in society and through what mechanisms. He has been part of several longitudinal ageing studies around the world including the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, the US Health and Retirement Study, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study and the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey.

May 2022 | The many faces of inequality in a digitised world: thoughts on deprivation, devices, data, deception, disruption and dialogue

Watch the recording on YouTube: The many faces of inequality in a digitised world.

Speaker: Dr Claudia Pagliari (University of Edinburgh)

Entrenched inequalities have major impacts on health outcomes, both within and across societies. While the digital era has potential to improve this situation it may also worsen it.

In her talk, she will describe a few of the obvious and not so obvious pathways through which this happens, discuss some of the blind spots hindering governmental and clinical efforts to mitigate these effects, and examine influences in the wider digital and analogue economies that complicate the challenge. Finally, she will consider various approaches that may help to improve the fairness and benefits of digital health, and emphasise the need for whole systems thinking.

Speaker bio

Claudia is senior lecturer in primary care and informatics in the University of Edinburgh. She is active across the Centre for Population Health Sciences, the Centre for Medical Informatics, the Edinburgh Global Health Academy and the Institute for Science, Technology and Innovation. She also has several expert advisory roles, including Expert and Technical Advisor in Digital Health for the World Health Organisation, Advisor and Chair of the National Expert Group in Digital Ethics for the Scottish Government, and member of national scientific review boards for Norway, Belgium and Switzerland.

February 2022 | Why the poor die young: the role of digital inequalities

Watch the recording on YouTube: Why the poor die young: the role of digital inequalities.

Speaker: Prof Arpana Verma (University of Manchester)

Arpana is Clinical Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology and she is Head of the Division of Population Health, Health Services Research and Primary Care. She is Director of Manchester Urban Collaboration on Health (MUCH), a WHO Collaborating Centre and honorary Consultant in Public Health at Public Health England.

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