Admission requirements
Open to all master students Psychology. The course provides a broad view on eHealth in a diverse range of health care settings.
Description
This course provides an introduction to what eHealth, or digital health, encompasses and how it can be used to enhance and improve health care in several different areas. The lectures in this course provide a broad overview of eHealth tools and applications within a wide range of health care settings. In each lecture, the use of eHealth in a different field in health care is explored, showing students current interventions, how they work, their effectiveness, and how they are deployed in health practice. Topics that are addressed are (a.o.) prevention and lifestyle interventions, chronic care and self-management, rehabilitation tools, and mental health care. Within these topics a wide range of eHealth functionalities is addressed, such as online treatment, smartphone applications, serious gaming, web portals, and blended forms of eHealth. We also discuss the practical annotations of this form of health care and its implementation in daily clinical practice.
Besides exhibiting existing eHealth applications and interventions, we focus more theoretically on how to develop and design eHealth. Questions such as; ‘How do you make sure to connect to needs and skills of your target group?’, and ‘How can you achieve that an eHealth tool is taken up in the care process and will be actively used?’ are addressed. To bring this knowledge into practice, students develop their own eHealth prototype modules in small unsupervised subgroups, outside of the lectures. This course provides students with knowledge and skills on a topic with increasing impact in health care, which puts them in a forerunner position regarding innovative (online) interventions, treatment delivery and implementation strategies.
Course objectives
At the end of the course, the student can:
Explain the basic principles of eHealth and explain how eHealth is used in different health care settings related to Health-, Medical and Neuropsychology
Give examples of a broad range of eHealth tools, interventions and functionalities, and explain how they can be used to improve health care.
Explain how eHealth interventions can be developed, implemented and evaluated based on theoretical models
Apply theoretical models of eHealth intervention development by creating a prototype eHealth model to target a self-chosen health problem
Explore the wishes, needs, and skills of a chosen target group, and develop their eHealth prototype in such a way that takes these wishes, needs, and skills into account
Timetable
For the timetable of this course please refer to MyTimetable
Registration
Education
Students must register themselves for all course components (lectures, tutorials and practicals) they wish to follow. You can register up to 5 days prior to the start of the course.
Exams
You must register for each exam in My Studymap at least 10 days before the exam date. You cannot take an exam without a valid registration in My Studymap. Carefully read all information about the procedures and deadlines for registering for courses and exams.
Exchange students and external guest students will be informed by the education administration about the current registration procedure.
Mode of instruction
The course contains 8 meetings of 2 hours each: seven lectures and one presentation meeting. Also, there are unsupervised workgroups.
Course overview:
Seven lectures of 2 hours: to cover the relevant literature, provide knowledge about eHealth in health care and discuss theory about eHealth development, implementation and evaluation.
One presentation meeting of 2 hours: every subgroup presents their own prototype eHealth intervention.
Unsupervised workgroups: to practice in developing online modules and test these modules within the target group. Students make their own planning regarding when and where to work on the assignment together with their subgroup, based on a concrete outline in the course reader and information and support in the lectures. Tutoring/supervision is available during the course to discuss questions or problems with a supervisor.
Assessment
Grading will be based on three assessments:
1. Writing a group report on the developmental process of the module, incorporating scientific literature and what is learned during the lectures (grade);
2. Group presentation of the eHealth prototype module in the last lecture session of the course (grade);
3. Individual short essay to reflect on an eHealth related topic in line with the developed prototype intervention (grade).
Students have to pass all parts of the assessment. Grading will be based on the poster presentation (20%), the paper (60%) and the essay (20%).
The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences has instituted that instructors use a software programme for the systematic detection of plagiarism in students’ written work. All students are required to take and pass the Scientific Integrity Test with a score of 100% in order to learn about the practice of integrity in scientific writing. Students are given access to the quiz via a module on Brightspace. In case of fraud disciplinary actions will be taken. Please see the information concerning fraud.
Reading list
- eHealth Research, Theory and Development: a multidisciplinary approach (2018). 1st edition. Routledge: Oxford (freely online available via University Library)
Contact
Dr. Sylvia van Beugen
Unit of Health, Medical and Neuropsychology
Room 2A05
Tel: +31(0)715274047
s.van.beugen@fsw.leidenuniv.nl