UCL TechSharing Seminar Series

Nikki Newhouse, multidisciplinary PhD student (UCLIC and PCPH) and coordinator of the TechSharing Seminars, reports on the latest seminar in the series, which invited the audience to question prevailing paradigms in digital intervention evaluation.

 September saw the return of the popular UCL TechSharing Seminar, a quarterly collaborative half-day workshop aimed at sharing multidisciplinary knowledge and experience of working with technology and digital interventions.

The seminar series was established in 2013 and is organised by PhD students and early career researchers from UCL’s Interaction Centre (UCLIC) in the Department of Computer Science and the eHealth Unit in the Research Department of Primary Care and Population Health.  The series was established as a way of bringing together colleagues from across UCL who work in complementary but disparate fields including health, online intervention development and human-computer interaction. The seminars allow us to share expertise and knowledge and encourage strong and fruitful future collaborations. Previous seminars have focused on a range of topics, from developing theory underpinning intervention development, to systems analysis and storyboarding, even how to select your software developer. Targeted at UCL students and academics, external attendees and speakers are more than welcome!

The seminars follow a format that allows for a wide variety of presentations and questions from the audience. Discussion and debate are positively encouraged and this seminar’s audience did not disappoint, with lots of lively conversation between speakers and audience members keeping the seminar’s timekeepers on their toes. This term’s seminar was entitled Evaluating digital interventions – challenging prevailing paradigms and focused on challenging the paradigms currently ingrained in the design and evaluation of healthcare interventions. The first session focused on the pros and cons of utilising participant usage data in health intervention development and included presentations from Delmiro Fernandez-Reyes (UCL – Paediatrics, Global Health Infectious Diseases and Computational Statistics), Kathy Stawarz (UCL-UCLIC), Mirco Musolesi (UCL – Geography) and myself & Ghadah Alkhaldi (UCL- eHealth Unit & UCLIC) on a diverse range of topics including the relationship between usage data and user engagement, and the design of apps to aid habit formation. The second session examined the role of control groups in digital intervention design and led to some lively discussion, with presentations from Aleksandra Herbec (UCL – Epidemiology and Public Health), visiting PhD student Tobias Sonne (Aarhus University), Claire Garnett (UCL – Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology) and Ildiko Tombor (UCL – Epidemiology and Public Health, UCL).

Two keynote speakers then addressed the fundamental questions of whether or not the ‘gold-standard’ RCT paradigm is the best approach to take in the context of digital interventions and, if not, what is the alternative. Professor Elizabeth Murray (UCL- Head of the Research Department of Primary Care and Population Health & eHealth Unit) explored the option of implementation as an alternative to the RCT, using examples from the HeLP-Diabetes research programme. Professor Murray suggested that we consider the possibility that implementation can be undertaken prior to, or in parallel with, the traditional trial paradigm. There was much discussion about the consequences and implications of the continued dominance of RCTs. Professor Ann Blandford (UCL- UCLIC & Institute for Digital Health) then asked To RCT or not to RCT? That is the question… Professor Blandford’s talk focused on the philosophical and practical similarities and differences between traditional public health and computer science complex intervention development frameworks and stressed the need for a multi-lingual approach, which effectively translates between and across the disciplines. She stressed the importance of context in the development and evaluation of digital interventions and highlighted the role of qualitative methods as a key approach in both establishing user requirements and system effectiveness.

If you would like to know more about the seminars or to get involved as part of the organising committee, please get in touch! A huge thank you to this event’s organising committee: Rosie Webster, Aisling O’Kane, Ghadah Alkhaldi and Aleksandra Herbec. In addition, we wish Rosie all the best in her new role as Senior Public Health Officer at Breast Cancer Now.

 

Nikki Newhouse

nikki.newhouse.14@ucl.ac.uk