Barriers to Recruiting and Engaging End-Users in Large-Scale Digital Health & Wellbeing Technologies and Services

Health and social care services in the U.K. are increasingly looking towards digital technologies and services as a way to support those with chronic illness to better manage their disease and to allow older people to continue living independently for longer. The Delivering Assisted Living Lifestyles at Scale (dallas) programme aims to address these two issues. However implementing a large-scale digital health innovation programme is a hugely complex process. This paper reports preliminary qualitative findings from the analysis of project documentation and interviews with the four consortia of the dallas programme. It presents an overview of the difficulties experienced when engaging and attempting to recruit individuals to participate in the dallas related services. A number of barriers – such as the use of co-design methodologies, branding and partnership constraints and unsustainable recruitment targets – hindered initial engagement strategies when trying to reach and enrol large numbers of end-users. The recruitment strategies of the consortia within this digital health innovation programme have hence continued to evolve in order to adapt to the emerging realities on the ground.