Would You Trust an Artificial Pancreas? The Role of Communication in Digital Health
On 8 June, the Digital Society Initiative (DSI) at the University of Zurich hosted a symposium on Communication and Trust in Digital Health. About 30 researchers, healthcare professionals, and members of the diabetes community explored the central questions of the event: How does communication shape trust in digital health technologies, and how are these dynamics challenged, complicated, and refracted through the lived experience of using an artificial pancreas?
Organised by Clara-Maria Barth (Department of Informatics) and Federica Zavattaro (Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care), the symposium featured four international speakers who examined communication and trust from different perspectives: Dr. Libby Maman, Clara Häfliger, Janina Gaudin, and Dr. Francisco Nunes. Discussions covered how people evaluate the trustworthiness of digital health solutions, the importance of supportive communication in chronic care, the use of visual storytelling to communicate experiences with diabetes, and how transparency and personalization can build trust in open-source artificial pancreas systems.
An interactive panel discussion explored digital health adoption, artificial intelligence, and future research priorities. By combining academic insights with lived experiences, the event fostered a rich interdisciplinary dialogue on the role of trust and communication in the future of digital health.