Recruiting our Digital Critical Friends

The Wessex Secure Data Environment is committed to co-designing and developing our SDE with patients and the public at its heart. In March 2024 we worked with the South West SDE to design and deliver a process to onboard and train members of the public to act as ‘Digital Critical Friends’.

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What is a DCF?

A Digital Critical Friend (DCF) is a trained member of the public who helps with digital health and research. They support the SDE programme by:

• Joining SDE boards
• Helping design the PPIE programme
• Taking part in the Data Access Committee

DCFs make sure that the views of people in Wessex are considered in decisions and policies. They bring in community insights, ensuring the process is inclusive and transparent.

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Objectives of DCF recruitment 

A successful DCF recruitment should bring in about 16-20 diverse and representative members. After that, there will be regular meetings to discuss key issues and communication strategies.

The 16-20 target is flexible but was suggested because:

• It ensures enough people for a diverse group.
• It allows for varying levels of participation, attendance, and possible dropouts.
• Meetings can include smaller breakout groups to keep discussions manageable, with around 4-8 people per session.

We plan to start recruiting DCFs from under-represented communities in Wessex, who we are already working with as part of our Seldom Heard Groups work, as well as through current Public, Patient, Involvement and Engagement networks of the two participating Integrated Care Boards.

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Outcomes of the DCF recruitment

We are immensely proud of the outcomes of our DCF recruitment process, attracting over 60 applications. From this list we interviewed 41 people and selected 14. We also completed a second round of targeted recruitments to increase our objectives of diversity, inclusion and age ranges, to reach a total of 17.

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DCF training