The Digital Health Centre

Digital and physical health centres should exist side by side to improve health and quality of life for citizens. Digital services can attract sub target groups who are not usually keen to make use of municipal services, which expands the reach of health promotion services to even more citizens.
 
On top of providing a larger selection of health services, the partnership also supports the municipalities in exploiting their resources better through e.g. digital teams across municipalities.
 
The Digital Health Centre is the framework for digital patient education for citizens with type 2 diabetes as well as heart disease. Furthermore, the framework also supports a number of additional services for different target groups. The joint vision is to prevent chronic illness and support people with chronic illnesses to gain skills for mastering their illness and health, as well as a high quality of life.

Digital Patient Education

Evaluation report for "Digital Patient Education. For citizens with type 2 diabetes and heart disease", April 2018.
 
After the project period, Digital Patient Education has been implemented into daily practice. Digital patient education guides citizens on living a better life with their chronic illness through e-learning as self-study and online educational webinars. The individual goals and needs of the citizens are central and the focus is on supporting citizens in mastering their own illness.
Currently, digital patient education is offered to citizens with type 2 diabetes as well as citizens with heart valve disease or coronary heart disease. For more information, please visit Det Digitale Sundhedscenter's website.

Further Digital Patient Education (”Health together at home”)

Funding from TrygFonden has enabled the Digital Health Centre to develop more digital patient educations. From January 2021 until July 2023 the partnership will develop and test digital patient educations for COPD and two more types of heart disease (heart failure and cardiac arrhythmia). Additionally, a lifestyle support education will also be developed for people who want to change their habits in regard to food, exercise and smoking. 

 
The new patient educations will build upon the same concept and include a mixture of e-learning, webinars as well as initial and final meetings with healthcare staff from the health centre. 
The Health Innovation Centre of Southern Denmark is responsible for Project Management and running the digital patient educations.

Digital Diabetes

The ”Digital Diabetes” project (Jan. 2019 – Jun. 2021) was co-funded by the Danish Health Authority’s funds for ”Efforts for inclusion of and adherence of vulnerable diabetes patients”. The project developed the first version of the app ”My Life – My Health”.
 
During the project period, the primary target group for the app was vulnerable citizens with type 2 diabetes as well as vulnerable citizens who are at risk of developing chronic illnesses dure to their lifestyle choices when it comes to health. These target grouos need support to achieve healthy lifestyle choices, and the app provides simple tools and knowledge, which is communicated visually in a good and actionable overview.
 
The app is primarily the citizen’s own access to support and knowledge, however the intention is that the app will work as a tool to support the dialogue between the citizen and professionals providing daily support for them (Appen er primært borgerens egen indgang til støtte og viden, men intentionen er, at appen også skal fungere som et dialogstøtteredskab mellem borgeren og de fagpersoner, som støtter borgeren i hverdagen (sheltered residence supporters, nurses, dieticians, physiotherapists etc.)
 
The app and content can be adapted for citizens of different target groups to address their needs. At the end of this project, the Digital Health Centre will therefore continue to develop new content for the app for citizens with different types of illnesses or needs to support healthy lifestyle choices. 

Becoming Digitally Competent

The ”Becoming Digitally Competent” (Jan. 2019 – Jun. 2020) was co-funded by the Ministry of Health’s funds for ”Improving digital skills for healthcare staff”.
 
The project was a collaboration between The Health Innovation Centre of Southern Denmark, Steno Diabetes Centre Odense, The Department for Cross-Sector Collaboration, 8 municipalities as well as University College Lillebaelt (UCL) and University College South Denmark (UCSYD).
 
The purpose of the project was to improve digital skills for healthcare staff in municipalities and hospitals. The practice-oriented educational programme aimed to provide healthcare staff with stronger skills to understand technology, use digital technologies and communicate with citizens in digitally supported treatment, care and rehabilitation.
 
In this way, ”Becoming Digitally Competent” supported the implementation of the Digital Health Centre as preparing the healthcare professionals to take on their new role in digital contact with the citizen is an important prerequisite for implementation.
 
The learnings and results from the project are carried on in the cross-disciplinary elective subject at the UCL health programme about implementation called ”Digitalisation and Relationship Building”. 

Collaboration Partners

The Digital Health Centre partnership includes a number of municipalities, Danish Diabetes Association, Danish Heart Assocation, Danish Lung Assocation and the Region of Southern Denmark (Health Innovation Centre of Southern Denmark, Cross-Sector Collaboration and Steno Diabetes Centre Odense).
 
The daily operations of the Digital Health Centre are jointly financed by the municipalities, while further development projects are financed through public innovation funds from the Ministry of Health, the Danish Health Authority and Trygfonden.