The Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI) joined the Digital Lifelines programme in March 2022 with the aim of working with delivery partners, organisations delivering services, and people who use drugs, to collaboratively produce a future vision for digitally enabled services to better support people who use drugs. As partners in the DHI, design researchers at the Innovation School at The Glasgow School of Art provide expertise in participatory design approaches to creatively engage people with lived experience and those delivering services to co-design future experiences of care and support for people who use drugs.

The final report presents an overview of activities and findings from the integrated ‘Discover and Define’ workstream led by DHI between March and December 2022, as part of the Digital Lifelines Scotland programme. It begins by outlining the aims and the overall process, followed by a summary of the activities and findings from the two key phases of this work - ‘Scoping the project’ and ‘Mapping the current’.

The report concludes with a synthesis of emerging insights and themes from different perspectives (i.e., lived experience, service, sector, policy and digital); and highlights key opportunities for digitally enabled services to support people who use drugs and have multiple, complex and enduring needs to reduce risk of harm and live well in the community. This will inform the ‘Develop’ phase, to co-design future digital solutions and services.