Digital health (DH) holds many promises for the future of healthcare both in Saudi Arabia and other countries around the world. However, looking at the implementation of DH, as for example electronic medical records, it remains challenging to achieve the promised goals. Whereas the impact of DH is often measured at patient level, the impact on health care professionals is often overlooked. 

Health care professionals using increasingly complex DH systems often find these systems “user unfriendly”, and they are having an increased risk of burnout because of the increasing amount time they have to spent working with them. Considering the increasing interest of spreading acritical intelligence, coupled with big data analytics and genomics, one may assume that this the pressure will continue to rise for health care professionals. 

In addition, societal, ethical and financial questions are raised with the implementation of these technologies. How can an increasingly elderly population use digital interfaces of DH, i.e. apps (societal)? Who should govern our most private, genomic data (ethical)? How can these expensive technologies remain affordable (financial)? Considering these various questions about the development of DH, a method has been suggested to incorporate different perspectives from users (including health care professionals and older patients), society, ethics, and finance in the design of DH. Participatory design is the activity of involving designers and non-designers in a democratic way in the design process, whereby mutual learning and creativity are key. 

There are various ways to conduct PD and the theory of PD is still in development. There are four phases in PD: exploration of the problem, developing a definition of the problem, creation of a solution and evaluation and testing of the solution. Each step has key tools. The focus of this talk will be on providing an overview of PD methods, tools and theory to develop DH successfully. 

This will help researchers and practitioners to include multiple perspectives in the development of DH. Aspects for future research will also be highlighted focusing on the development of PD theory.