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Table 1 Description of the four key areas of the “E-nabling Digital Co-production” Framework

From: Insights on conducting digital patient and public involvement in dementia research during the COVID-19 pandemic: supporting the development of an “E-nabling digital co-production” framework

The ‘E-nabling Digital Co-production’ Framework

Key area

Description

Technological

Technological considerations include assessment of the constraints, preferences, and opportunities that technology can provide

Preferences:

How are preferences and any support needs identified by public contributors communicated with researchers?

Power:

What is the potential for shared decision-making regarding the use of technology, including functional and operational components?

To what extent are technological considerations revisited regularly with public contributors recognising the fast pace of developments in online collaborative platforms?

What potential exists for supporting researchers, PPI staff and public contributors to develop confidence in using online methods?

Resources

Resources were considered at a personal or a more mechanistic level

Personal:

Consideration of increased emotional toll with online involvement, with recognition of increasing fatigue and additional personal resilience often required for negotiating challenging work within a virtual context

Professional resources:

Both payment for lived experience input and increased demands on those delivering PPI online

Preparation:

Are additional requirements planned from the outset?

These could include additional facilitation roles, onboarding sessions, costs of coproduction platforms, phone credit/printing etc./software, budgeting for an increased frequency but shorter meetings

Wider resources may include additional training for researchers, PPI staff and public contributors to support the use of new technology

Involvementability

‘Involvementability’ is offered as an example of a non-functional requirement, a concept that aims to describe requirements that are related to the success of a design task or process but are not integral to its content [22]

Process:

How does the nature of involvement method or process itself impact on the extent that meaningful involvement can be achieved?

How do codesign methods differ in a digital space?

Product:

How does the area of health research itself impact on the extent that involvement can easily translate to a digital space, such as exploring digital health interventions may be facilitated or made more complex through online involvement?

Population:

How easily will ‘involvement’ translate online for different populations?

Ethical and Welfare

How does digital PPI interact with a range of areas including:

Welfare of public contributors

Digital exclusion

Impact of digital engagement on social communication

 Power

Safeguarding

Privacy, confidentiality, and data security