From aged care to digital design: challenges of working with diverse stakeholders in designing digital solutions for health information exchange

Introduction: Integrating the perspectives of multiple stakeholders with diverse needs when designing a digital solution to optimize the health information exchange during aged care transfers can be a challenging task. Particularly, the designers of such digital solutions may face added difficulties due to the limited contextual understanding of concerns in the aged care setting and translating the terminologies used by the multiple stakeholders into a digital format that is agreeable to all parties involved. We conducted a series of iterative co-design workshops with multiple stakeholders involved in the research including aged care staff, paramedics, hospital staff and pharmacists to determine how critical data related to aged care residents should be presented and governed in a web-based critical data display accessible by all parties involved in the decision-making process of medical transfers. We also conducted consumer interviews to ensure that the agreed solution is consistent with the expectations of aged care residents and their carers.

Results: We will discuss the lessons learnt during the co-design process that enabled us to reach a consensus despite certain inconsistencies between qualitative and quantitative studies in the research. We will also show how co-design workshops can be designed to enhance knowledge sharing by stakeholders from diverse backgrounds.

Conclusions: The key challenges of working with diverse end-user groups occur due to the methodological and experiential differences between stakeholders. These challenges can be resolved to a greater extent by utilising iterative design techniques followed by knowledge-sharing and sense-making sessions to obtain feedback from domain experts.