Locating Participation in User-Centric Design in Digital Health Technologies

In recent years, amid the rapid proliferation of digital public health technologies — including apps, chatbots, health monitoring and surveillance platforms and wearables — critical calls have grown from research networks, civil society and patient advocacy groups worldwide for patients and communities to be integrated into the design and implementation of health technologies as strategic domain experts and stakeholders, rather than passive end users.Yet much of the evolving research on the challenges and opportunities of user-centric design in digital public health has remained largely siloed — first within separate research disciplines, and further by work undertaken in distinct Global North and Global South contexts. Moreover, participation, and particularly the meaningful inclusion of patients, communities and publics, remains unevenly realized.This Research Topic seeks to advance critical and interdisciplinary scholarship on how participation is conceptualized, operationalized and contested within user-centric design processes in digital health. We invite contributions that consider how participation can be located, strengthened and sustained across the design, implementation and evaluation of digital health technologies.We welcome submissions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:• Participation, Inclusion, and Equity — how global communities and participants are meaningfully involved, and how power and access are distributed across the design process.• Building Trust through User-Centred Design – how transparency, accountability, and meaningful participation can shape the legitimacy and adoption of digital public health technologies. • Integrating Lived Experience and Scientific Evidence in User-Centric Design — how experiential knowledge and scientific evidence can be combined to produce more relevant and credible solutions.• Methodologies for Promoting User-Centric Design — methods, frameworks and tools that operationalize participation and embed user perspectives throughout the innovation lifecycle.• Sustainability in Contexts of Rapid Innovation — how participatory and user-centric approaches can be maintained amid fast-moving technological change and shifting global contexts.Femida Gwadry-Sridhar is the Founder and CEO of Pulse Infoframe Inc. and sits on the board of Medpace. All other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regards to the Research Topic subject.This Research Topic builds on the workshop “User-Centric Design in Digital Public Health: Challenges and Opportunities in an Era of Disruptive Innovation” (26 June 2026, Barcelona Spain). It was launched in collaboration with the 11th International Digital Public Health Conference, a world-leading annual interdisciplinary event on research and innovation in digital public health, organized by University College London. We welcome submissions from speakers, attendees and the broader research community. Topic editors: Stephen Roberts, Femida Gwadry-Sridhar Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83330/locating-participation-in-user-centric-design-in-digital-health-technologies