ScienceFlows participates in the conference “Communication and Health: Innovative experiences”

EMPAR VENGUT CLIMENT// The ScienceFlows researcher Empar Vengut Climent has participated in the conference Communication and Health: Innovative Experiences, held on May 3 at the Catalunya Campus of the Rovira i Virgili University. Her lectured entitled “Design and implementation of an ICT tool to measure the impact of training on the perception of science of university students” has allowed to bring the Erasmus + Persist_EU project to the attendees, led by our research group.

This conference was a meeting point to reflect and discuss different strategies of convergence between health and technology, with the aim of improving the communication process among the social and health workers, public administrations and patients, and users.

Likewise, topics as diverse as the digital transformation of the social and health sector of Catalonia, gamification and serious games in the health sector were treated; co-creation as a tool to transform the service to people; the use of platforms and applications for communication; and the empowerment of the patient.

Anna Sort, from PlayBenefit, showed the participants how “serious we get when we played”

In addition, the importance of the continuous aging of the population and the new challenges that this demographic change implies in the health and social systems and in the welfare state became relevant. In order to face them, co-creation and interdisciplinarity were presented as possible key points. Emphasis was also placed on the need to address social and health issues from different perspectives, such as the approaches of communicators, anthropologists and social scientists, who could undoubtedly contribute a worldview to the subject under discussion. The organising committee was able to create an atmosphere of debate among participants that made the conference a truly enriching experience. One of the most widely shared reflections was the need to position the patient and user at the centre of the communicative process. “We must seduce patients, talk to them with their own language”, said Aurora Fernández, a pharmacist at the Vall d’Hebron Hospital, who presented the Air4Life project, in which an application has been designed to improve adherence to treatment in patients with chronic respiratory impairment. “We must take advantage of the tools that already exist in other areas and we know that they work and incorporate them to achieve better communication”, Fernandez continued.

Finally, the work that was presented from ScienceFlows includes the design of the research that will be carried out over two years in the PERSIT_EU project, which consists, among other aims, in the evaluation of the opinions or attitudes that help college students make decisions about their health.