On November 17th, the ninth ACHC symposium finally took place, entitled “Digital Health: resistance or motivation?“. Due to the Corona crisis, this symposium had to be canceled earlier this year. Last week it took place online for the same reason.

The symposium was chaired by Eline Smit, who also gave the first presentation of the day. She presented an overview of the digital tools for behavioral change we currently have at our disposal. During the remainder of the afternoon, speakers from science and practice told about two apps developed by the Netherlands Nutrition Center (Roel Hermans), the use of serious games for health purposes (Ann DeSmet), the internet use of people with cancer (Mies van Eenbergen & Song Duimel), promoting desired behavior change through adolescents (Crystal Smit) and about the way in which people with different health literacy skills select, evaluate and process health information (Corine Meppelink).

The day ended with a keynote lecture by Heather Patrick, who told us in her presentation ‘A walk on the wild side: Tales of translating behavioral science into health tech’ more about the challenges and opportunities faced by a health psychologist who has made the transition from the academic world to the private sector.

In addition to these seven presentations, there were also six speakers who informed the audience through so-called “Blitz presentations” about their recent research findings, as well as about new and ongoing research projects in the field of Digital Health. They also paid explicit attention to the motivation and resistance that digital tools can cause.

The symposium was made possible by The Netherlands Flanders Communication Association (NeFCA), the DigiComLab and the personal VENI grant awarded by NWO-MaGW to Eline Smit (451-15-028).

The ACHC and audience can once again look back on a very successful symposium, with a lot of interaction between speakers and audience despite the online format. And under the motto “Every disadvantage has its advantage”, the same online format allowed us to welcome a record number of participants this time!

All presentations are recorded, so for those who want to review some of the presentations: the recordings of the presentations can be found here.