Design Sustainability Goals for Digital Care Pathway for Epilepsy: A Healthcare Professionals’ Perspective

Abstract

The healthcare systems across the world are transitioning towards sustainable development of digital health solutions such as digital care pathway (DCP) to meet the growing needs of healthcare services. DCP is a digital health solution to provide facilities like making online appointments, ease of access to connect with a healthcare professional (HCP), sharing symptoms and tracking progress of the disease. In this paper, a team of researchers and healthcare professionals (HCP) examine and propose the sustainability goals for Digital Care Pathway for Epilepsy (DCPE) project from the economic, social, and environmental perspectives. The project is a DCPE for children, adolescents, and adult patients with epilepsy. The research methodology is a single case study approach based on the DCPE in Northern Ostrobothnia Wellbeing County (Pohde), in Finland as a unit analysis. Furthermore, the data was collected using feedback from a co-design session with four HCPs all working as clinicians in epilepsy care at Oulu University Hospital. The analysis from the co-design session resulted in various factors to achieve sustainability goals like reduction in travel to hospital, cost efficient, time saving, ease of access to connect with HCPs, and lower CO2 emission. However, there are several challenges such as adaptation to the online treatment options, proper management, and scheduling of online appointments, and building trust in epilepsy patients for remote treatment. Despite the challenges, HCPs confirm that the DCPE can be useful for treating patients with epilepsy through remote consultation along with the traditional ways.