Co-designing the future: End-user involvement in digital interventions

As healthcare systems experience mounting pressure for care, coupled with declining capacity, the adoption of digitally enabled interventions is expanding to relieve system burden 1 , 2 . Digital interventions encompass a range of technologies, including, but not limited to, wearable devices, mobile applications (apps), and administrative systems 3 . However, to ensure digital healthcare interventions are appropriate (i.e., fit for purpose) and beneficial, co-design should be incorporated into their development. Co-design can take many forms, such as user experience surveys or think-aloud demonstrations, and involves a range of stakeholders, such as patients and charitable organisations 4 . These interactions provide invaluable lived-experience perspectives to shape interventions at various stages of development and deployment. When offering a needed solution, the benefits of digital healthcare interventions can be substantial, such as wearables for data-informed clinical decision-making, apps for remote disease monitoring, and cross-platform administrative systems to promote integrated care. The former two examples are classified as digital medicine, a subset of digital healthcare focused on interventions that directly measure or intervene in human health 5 . Co-design approaches will be increasingly instrumental in ensuring future digital healthcare addresses the needs of populations and individuals, and avoids wasting resources on unwanted, inoperable, or ineffective interventions.