Canada Health Infoway Survey - Patient Digital Health Literacy (closes June 28)

[A Former User]

Hi everyone,
Hope you are doing well and enjoying spring weather!
Here's a message I'm passing on from Salima Hadibhai at CIHI (Canadian Institute for Health Information).
Best wishes to all,
Carolyn

Canada Health Infoway is building a Digital Health Literacy program with the goal of educating Canadians on core Digital Health information. The goal is to improve Canadians’ agency over their health through the digital tools available to them. Through this survey, they are looking to better understand your perspective on what core needs you have when it comes to Digital Health, as well as questions you think are important.

This survey will take about 15 minutes to complete. All answers provided by you will be held in strictest confidence and will be used for research purposes only. Your responses will be kept anonymous. The survey closes June 28th.

Survey Link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5N3WG3D

[A Former User]

I took the survey and it took about 1/2 hr especially since when I numbered the responses, the system would delete or rearrange them so I had to do each question a couple of times to ensure my responses were correct before pressing OK.

I also felt the questions were somewhat limited and some had answers that were problematic. One that comes to mind is about lack of access due to no computer or phone -- so who in that situation is able to answer this survey?

[A Former User]

Thanks Kathleen and Alies for the feedback. I’ll send your anonymized comments to CIHI. Annoying they circulate such a frustrating survey. Much appreciate your having the patience to give it a try and still take time to post your experience.

[A Former User]

Thanks, Carolyn. It is not good that a tech-oriented outfit like Infoway posts such a buggy survey without testing it first. Such a waste. With regard to the content, I don't know who came up with the questions and answers but they are missing a huge opportunity by not asking about understanding of digital health for the greater good - research, planning, pandemic management. It was all focused primarily on individual health - important but certainly not all the story. I am hoping to be involved with other digital literacy efforts since in the work I am doing with the Pan Canadian Health Data Strategy, public data health literacy is looming as one of the key elements for change. We desperately need the jurisdictions to work together and it is felt they will only want to do that if there is public pressure. For that the public need knowledge and understanding.

[A Former User]

I tired to take the survey but eventually gave up because my answers kept disappearing.

I also agree with Alies on the few questions I did see.

[A Former User]

We've heard back from Canada Infoway, thanks to Salima Hadibhai at CIHI, with permission to share the response to the PAN community's anonymized feedback.

Feel free to reach Haley Armstrong directly at harmstrong@infoway-inforoute.ca
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Thank you so much for sharing this. I so sad that this is the experience patients are encountering, and of course not what we had planned for when launching. That said, I’m so appreciative to have this feedback and we will be amending where we can immediately. For those comments that require longer planning, we have ensured it has been noted for the broader team and will be implemented into our overall survey metrics and feedback, ultimately shaping the program.

I want to sincerely apologize that the patients within your networks are having these issues and please know we are addressing them as quickly as we can. Again, the feedback is always helpful, especially when it is to better improve the patient experience and how we deliver these opportunities. Please let me know if there is anything I can do or provide in the immediate, otherwise we will continue to make these changes!

Thank you,

Haley

[A Former User]

I experienced similar difficulties like Alies. So I guess I wasn't alone.

I guess one way to have avoided this is to test the questions and formulate them so they can be done over the phone. Some questions had as many as 11 items you either had to rank or declare NA to get to the next question.

If you forgot to rank one, the whole thing would be reshuffled.

Doing a question over the phone, you wouldn't ask to rank more than 3 things.

Or else list your 11 items and ask people to pick only 3.

[A Former User]

Thanks, Carolyn for sharing the comments with Infoway. So often we (at least I) grumble and don't do anything so there is no chance for improvement. At least here there is.

[A Former User]

I have done it but found the scope limited with little chance to add what I think is important. Happy that I did not run into the same glitches, but I did find an error in a question that shook my faith in their capability to field a perfect survey.

[A Former User]

For a survey on digital health the site is digitally in need of care. Questions with 7 or 8 sections can't all be seen on a cell or tablet and you need to see your ranked answers. Misses very important interaction with public health so important in a pandemic. i.e. Digital connections with public health for testing and vaccinations. Other than the questions on how we prefer to get our information, that we initiate, there is no looking to how to improve our digital health information for the general public on important health matters. One topic was the sharing of the information. Lurking in the background is multitude of platforms used in health care and the problem of sharing between them. I get the feeling that the authors of the survey think that this is not a problem. It is both technologically and cost wise.

[A Former User]

Should we wait a few days before doing the survey?

[A Former User]

I have no idea but will ask Haley Armstrong. Unless they extend the deadline, my guess is that there will not be any more changes.

[A Former User]

I had a similar experience to others who commented. Surprised at the setup/software- For a tech -"digitally" focused organization it was not a user friendly tool. It may have been the set up and perhaps not enough testing pre launch . Regarding content- like others said, it seemed a bit narrow in focus and limiting in what they will learn. perhaps I am being too critical, however it felt like they have a workplan in place and the survey is designed to support the actions they have in mind.

[A Former User]

Hi everyone,
The comments posted above have all gone to Canada Infoway, in anonymous form. I haven't got word of any change in the deadline of Monday June 28 for this survey. So fill it out as well as you can. Please send any further comments to Haley at harmstrong@infoway-inforoute.ca or post them here and I'll forward them if you'd like to keep your name out of it. They do seem genuinely appreciative of our suggestions.
Best wishes, Carolyn

[A Former User]

UPDATE. Here's a note from Haley Armstrong at Canada Infoway after receiving my last batch of anonymized comments from above. I think they've heard us! Cheers, Carolyn

This feedback is truly invaluable to the organization, our work, and the way we build our collaboration efforts moving into the future – I can not thank you and your community enough for taking the time to share! I think, importantly, some feedback can be actioned immediately, but more so there is some extremely useful feedback, insight and direction for future projects and improvements. We’ve heard clearly that SurveyMonkey as a tool, and the structure of the survey, was not nearly as user-friendly and intuitive as it could have been. This is something we are addressing for future work within the whole organization. Some of the feedback as it relates to the time to complete and intuitive logic of the questions (i.e. how to rank, change answers, not loose all previous responses, etc.) was addressed and seems to have had better reception from multiple communities – again, a huge thank you to your community for this feedback!

Finally, another important point was the ability to provide more free-thought feedback, insights and advice, versus being limited to the question responses provided. Although we can’t fix that for this survey, we will not only continue to build this into future surveys, but I would also love the opportunity to connect with those interested in your community via some of our more open dialogue collaboration tables, interviews and focus groups. Should that be appropriate and of interest, I’d be more than happy to share those opportunities with you to share with your network.

Again, I would like to extend my thanks to you and your community for this feedback. Co-design and co-production need to be the standard and having the opportunity to receive this feedback will continue building us towards that way of work and collaboration.

Thanks, Haley