Boosting the digitalization of social and care services: A methodological approach for the evaluation and uptake of Open Service Platforms in the Active and Healthy Ageing (AHA) domain

Abstract

Abstract Background: The massive use of digital technologies has created a wide number of opportunities to improve Active and Healthy Ageing (AHA) services and products and respond to the socioeconomic and healthcare challenges caused by the growing ageing population. Therefore, a considerable number of digital AHA platforms have been produced in recent years. These platforms are operational on similar services within the same domain, competing or complementing each other in most cases. This makes it difficult for service providers, developers, and public administrations to choose based on the available options and their benefits. Methods: Responding to the need of providing information on prioritization and understanding the real value of these platforms to support decision making on the correct selection, this study understands the different characteristics and differences of the currently available services platforms, to get a comprehensive view directly through the feedback of platforms owners (both developers and managers) with the participatory involvement of every of the stakeholders contributing in the AHA services provision and consumption. Results: The paper develops and applies the proposed methodology into a specific AHA use case. Our findings suggest that this method can be considered an effective framework to define a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track the successful uptake and evolution of existing platforms thanks to the combination of the different stakeholders’ visions and interests at the different interventions levels. Conclusions: The proposed method led us to proposing a comprehensive list of KPIs, which has evolved along the process to a minimum set of KPIs, that are relevant for the methodologically measure the success of digital AHA platforms, according to four different perspectives: primary end-users, technological providers, end-users consumers and government, and at different levels of integration: user, community and municipalities.