Poster Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2024

Design Principles for the Development of Equitable Digital Health Technologies to support people with Pancreatic Cancer   (#275)

Kara Burns 1 , Kit Huckvale 1 , Carrie Van Rensburg 1 , Chathurika Palliya Guruge 1 , Cecily Gilbert 1 , Melanie Lovell 2 , Kylee Bellingham 3 , Nicole Rankin 4 , Mei Krishnasamy 5 , Gregory Crawford 6 7 , Farwa Rizvi 3 , Jennifer Philip 3 8 9
  1. Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, Australia
  2. Palliative Care, HammondCare, Greenwich , NSW, Australia
  3. Medicine, University of Melbourne , Parkville, Victoria, Australia
  4. School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, Australia
  5. School of Nursing, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, Australia
  6. Medicine, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  7. Palliative Medicine, Lyell McEwin Hospital, Modbury, South Australia, Australia
  8. Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, Australia
  9. St Vincent's Hospital, Fitzroy , VIC, Australia

Aims: No ‘one size fits all’ implementation strategy is possible for digital health technologies intended to support pancreatic cancer care across all Australian healthcare contexts. Thus, the aim of this research was to develop a set of principles that could act as flexible cues and be adapted to any primary, secondary, or tertiary care context to support the implementation of priorities under the National Pancreatic Cancer Roadmap, developed by Cancer Australia.

Methods: Development of the design principles involved a rigorous methodology combining multiple data sources and expert input. Initially, data from expert working groups and interviews with health IT professionals underwent conventional content analysis by two researchers, using an inductive grounded theory approach [4-6] allowing for the emergence of themes and patterns. To reduce the individual biases, two researchers independently developed a series of themes, then discussed divergence to agreement. A codesign focus group involving pancreatic cancer clinical, community, and consumer stakeholders was held. These experts provided peer-review and offered additional feedback, ensuring robustness and enriching the principles with their perspectives and experiences.

Results: Five principles were established to help embed equity in the development and implementation of digital health technologies for people with pancreatic cancer. These include: co-design with and for priority communities; design the service not the product; explore the data journey from end to end; incorporate non-digital fallbacks; and seek out existing, validated solutions and components.

Conclusion: The principles are not intended to replace project management approaches for digital health initiatives, nor to be an exhaustive catalogue of success factors. Instead, they are designed to act as flexible prompts to help teams working in pancreatic cancer care to consider and agree the overall approach to their digital health initiative and be guideposts to address equity as the project evolves.