SPIRIT: A Design Framework To Support Technology Interventions for Spiritual Care Within and Beyond the Clinic

Key findings from this study

This research indicates that:

• Three prerequisites—openness to care, safe space, and the ability to discern and articulate spiritual needs—are necessary conditions for meaningful spiritual care delivery.
• Six design dimensions (loving presence, meaning-making, appropriate technology use, location, relational closeness, and temporality) guide technology interventions for spiritual care.
• The framework applies to both clinical and non-clinical settings, extending spiritual care delivery beyond traditional health system constraints.

Overview

This work addresses the limited integration of spiritual care within health information and communication (HCI) research and clinical technology adoption. The authors present SPIRIT, a design framework developed through iterative stakeholder engagement with spiritual care providers (SCPs) and online health community members. The framework operationalizes digital technology design for spiritual care delivery across clinical and non-clinical contexts.

Methods and approach

The research combined member checking with SCPs to refine a previously established definition of spiritual support derived from co-design workshops. The authors reanalyzed prior data and conducted new interviews with SCPs to identify core prerequisites and design dimensions. This approach integrated insights from both professional spiritual care expertise and community perspectives into a unified framework.

Results

Three prerequisites emerged as essential for meaningful spiritual care: openness to care, safe space, and the capacity to discern and articulate spiritual needs. The SPIRIT framework articulates six design dimensions applicable to technology interventions: loving presence, meaning-making, appropriate degree of technology use, location, degree of relational closeness, and temporality. These dimensions synthesize empirical data on how digital systems can support spiritual care while preserving its relational and human-centered dimensions. The framework provides actionable guidance for developing interventions that extend spiritual care delivery beyond traditional clinical settings into digital and hybrid environments.

Implications

SPIRIT addresses a significant gap in technology design literature by establishing explicit design criteria for spiritual care systems. The framework enables practitioners and technologists to evaluate and develop digital interventions that respect the complex, relational nature of spiritual care rather than reducing it to transactional health services. This approach has potential to expand access to spiritual care for populations with limited clinic-based resources while maintaining fidelity to established spiritual care practices.

The six design dimensions provide a structured yet flexible template applicable across diverse clinical contexts, patient populations, and spiritual traditions. By centering prerequisites like openness and safe space, the framework acknowledges that spiritual care technology must attend to psychological and emotional conditions for effectiveness. Adoption of SPIRIT could standardize spiritual care technology evaluation and development in healthcare organizations and digital health platforms.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.