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Digital solutions are being developed across all areas of health and healthcare. There are products and services that are being used by the healthcare workforce to manage care all the way through to apps to support wellbeing and prevention. The challenge for developers, policy makers, funders, suppliers and providers is demonstrating value and the benefits of digital health initiatives. Whilst the evidence base is growing rapidly, there is still relatively little research evidence relating to many of the solutions available.

Increasingly payors, insurers, grant funders and investors are seeking evidence, especially of digital health solutions that are being used as part of care delivery.

This module considers how research questions are formulated, as well as a number of key research methods and tools that are relevant to digital health initiatives. The module will help you to understand how you can design your innovations in a manner that embeds efficacy assessment and evaluation to establish the benefit of a digital application.

During this module you’ll encounter frameworks and methods that will help you to formulate research protocols. The module engages with evidence based approaches and exposes participants to essential research methodology.

You will encounter a range of frameworks which will develop your capacity to identify, interrogate and interpret digital health projects to draw conclusions that will inform their use.

You will have the opportunity to learn about different types of digital health innovations and the ways that researchers undertake studies involving digital health applications such as those used in a clinical setting, consumer health informatics and health apps, patient-generated health data, social media and wearable self-tracking devices. Ìý

You will also explore questions about safety, security and data privacy, and the impact of these concepts on the design and conduct of studies. As part of study design, you will consider the legal, ethical and regulatory aspects of digital health innovations.Ìý

A highlight of this module is the immersion in the use of Generative AI and LLMs in digital health research. We will cover the role of these novel tools in formulating research questions, undertaking literature review and drafting.

The module is taught in-person over a 10 week period and is completed with an assessment. Each week there is an online preparatory lecture and an in-person lecture. There are weekly preparatory tasks and weekly seminar activities. Each week students will be able to experience case studies from different parts of the world and consider how these initiatives could be evaluated.