RHED-C: Remote Healthcare for Eating Disorders during (and post) COVID-19
There is a recent push towards remote healthcare service provision, further accelerated due to the pandemic. But recent research suggests that current technologies may fall short when it comes to meeting the needs of the users.
The method involves a series of interviews and co-design workshops with individuals with lived experience of EDs and/or ED service provision – to identify limitations of current technology offerings for remote healthcare provision. Followed by co-design workshops to enabled exploration of ideas and prototype generation to suggest new technologies that could address some of the current shortfalls with remote treatment technologies.
Our results support recent findings that current technology for remote healthcare services have some significant shortcomings. We also provide a number of prototypes to demonstrate the type of new technologies which could help to address these issues.
We found that improved technology is required for more effective, accepted and secure access to remote healthcare treatment. This is relevant not only during the current COVID-19 pandemic but also for the future use of remote service provision for EDs and health issues more generally.
People: Dawn Branley-Bell
Partners: Beat, NIWE eating distress service, Newcastle, Dr Catherine Talbot, Bournemouth University, Institute for Internet Technologies & Applications, JOANNEUM, Austria, Red Hat Software Developers, Hope Virgo – ED ambassador, author and ‘Dump the Scales’ Campaign Founder, and Lizzie Vass – BEAT ambassador and lived experience advisor