Online global atlas assists with digital health literacy

Researchers from RMIT University in Australia have assisted international researchers with producing the Global Atlas of Literacies for Health (GALH), an online tool visualising levels of health and digital health literacy across Europe.

The atlas combines data extracted from groups globally across the technology and health sectors over the past five years, including citizens, patients and health professionals. The study narrowed over 12,000 studies down to 450 best-practice examples.

RMIT, along with the European Union-funded research program Improving Digital Empowerment for Active Healthy Living (IDEAHL), worked with geospatial mapping company dMap in order to consolidate and visualise the data into an interactive map.

“We’ve taken a magnifying glass to a myriad of existing studies into health literacy and digital health literacy levels and unified them so they can be compared against each other,” RMIT’s Digital Health Hub Director Professor Kerryn Butler-Henderson said.

The result aims to provide an overview of the understanding of health information and digital health tools that can be quickly accessed.

“With a better understanding of these literacy levels, work to improve them can be better targeted towards the often-marginalised groups who need it most.”

RMIT Europe Digital Health Research Fellow Dr Gabriela Irrazabal said this means spending less time finding data.

“Our atlas does this for the user, presenting the information in a way that can be quickly and easily accessed … visible to the public, government, health organisations, policymakers and educators.”

The simplified access to data through the online map aims to be a tool facilitating further studies by researchers covering large groups of people, such as policymakers and educators in the health sector analysing health and digital health literacy performance against other populations.

“Data can be compared across Europe or filtered across countries and demographics, enabling informed decisions on policies affecting health.”

Whilst initially focusing on Europe, the RMIT team is now working with the IDEAHL consortium to plan the expansion of the atlas globally and to include other literacies for health, such as mental health literacy and financial literacy.

Image credit: iStockphoto.com/metamorworks