The Regional Ministry of Health and Families of the Government of Andalusia and the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) are research partners in the Digi-ID programme, a pan-European project whose main aim is to educate in digital skills to achieve better health outcomes and promote the social inclusion of adults with intellectual disabilities.
The main objective of this project is to create an educational programme accessible to people with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities to foster their digital skills, with the idea of improving their psychological and emotional health. This programme will be accessed through an application, the design of which will be simple and accessible.
The study has three phases to be carried out between 3 January and 31 December 2024. The first two phases correspond to the development of the digital tool and the educational programme, while the third phase will consist of its evaluation and validation.
This work has the approval of the Ethics Committee of the lead partner, Trinity College Dublin, which has already carried out the first two phases. It is now planned to replicate these phases in the Andalusian Public Health Service. The research will be carried out by a team comprising the Regional Ministry of Health and Families and the SAS.
Trinity College Dublin University is leading the project at the international level, in which Karolinska Institute, MADoPA (Centre Expert en Technologies et Services pour le Maintien en Autonomie à Domicile des Personnes Agées), Stockholm Region, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the University of Zagreb are also participating.
The Digi-ID programme, supported by the Comité de Entidades Representantes de Personas con Discapacidad (CERMI Andalucía) and the Federación Andaluza de Asociaciones Síndrome de Down (Down Andalucía), has secured funding from EIT Health, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a body set up in 2008 and part of Horizon 2020, the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. A total of 205,405 euros has been allocated to the APHS. This funding is divided into three annual instalments, from 2022 to 2024.
In Europe, it is estimated that around 8 million people have intellectual disabilities, who often experience poorer health and well-being outcomes due to unmet needs. Today’s society’s increasing reliance on information and communication technologies is further increasing inequalities, as these people lack digital skills.
The Digi-ID programme aims to bridge this gap by bringing together technologists and citizens with intellectual disabilities for mutual learning, to build a framework and roadmap to support the education of people with ID to use digital tools.
