Digitization has been touted for decades as one of the key solutions to the challenges of the welfare state because of its potential to deliver less costly and more sustainable social and health services to citizens.
However, when the Corona pandemic shut down face-to-face meetings between municipal staff and citizens in favour of online alternatives, a certain group of citizens proved to have major problems with digital tools.
Older and vulnerable citizens in rural areas were particularly disadvantaged when it came to online contact and digital health services. On the one hand, they did not have usable IT equipment and, on the other, they did not have the necessary digital skills.
The shutdown thus clearly showed that increased adoption of digital health solutions risks leading to inequality, less social cohesion and exclusion of a large population group, particularly in rural and peripheral areas.
Aims and benefits
It is this problem that has led to the REACT project, which aims to tackle digital exclusion in rural areas. The project will bring together partners to explore how we can empower older and vulnerable citizens to use digital health services.This will be done by training volunteer e-health faciltators to show older and vulnerable citizens how to use digital solutions and motivate them to do so.
Among other things, the project partners will develop a concept and related training material that can be used to teach volunteers how to best help their fellow citizens.
With the REACT project, the partners hope to build bridges between regional and local health providers and vulnerable and elderly citizens in rural areas.
The project has received 3 million dkk in funding from the EU's Erasmus+ education program
