Person to person: peer support in digital health adoption

Introducing a new digital tool into someone’s mental health care isn’t just a technical task. For many people, it brings up anxiety and real uncertainty about whether the technology is right for them. Katy Malone, Digital Navigator for CareLoop at Devon Partnership Trust, knows this first-hand. “I think the most common barrier people face is fear and anxiety around using the technology – which I completely understand,” she says. “I felt the same in the past when I’ve used digital health tools.” That shared experience is precisely what the digital navigator role is built on: not technical instruction, but genuine human understanding. 

Katy shares her own journey into the role. “I’m not particularly technologically minded,” she explains, “so for me it was something new, something exciting – a chance to develop new skills in an area I wasn’t particularly confident in before.” She also describes being surprised by who wants to use CareLoop. She expected younger people to be most interested. In reality, the range of ages was far wider than she’d anticipated – a reminder that assumptions about who engages with digital health can lead services to overlook people who might benefit most. 

Shelby Fox, Trust Lead for Peer Support Work at Devon Partnership Trust, describes a broader project currently underway: peer support workers based on acute inpatient wards, supporting people in the weeks before discharge and staying with them for up to four months as they move into the community. That transition is one of the most challenging periods for people living with psychosis. “Within the first few months of being discharged from hospital, people can sometimes need to come back,” Shelby explains. Having a peer support worker already known and trusted – present in the community, able to link people to local resources – can be the thing that prevents that from happening. 

What surprised Katy most about the digital navigator role was that it didn’t diminish the more human elements of care. “What surprised me most is that it still allows me to form relationships with the people I’m working with,” she says – whether that’s clinicians, care teams, or the individuals using CareLoop.  

By embedding people with lived experience within care teams, we ensure that CareLoop is adopted in a way that is truly person-centred – with service users’ voices represented not just in the room, but in the decisions being made. Technology can transform care, but it works best when it’s introduced with human connection.