The Assistive and Healthcare Technologies blog

RAT Group Members attend King’s Fund International Congress, 2013

Katherine Easton promoting the
RICHARD Project during second rapid
fire poster session

RAT Group members KatherineEaston, Lauren Powell, Dr Alison Orrell, Dr Lizzie Coates, Dr Jo Nicolson and Sarah Gorst attended The King’s Fund International Congress on Telehealth and Telecare held in London last week (1^st-3^rd July, 2013).

Lauren and Alison presented “‘Are you Ready Steady Go?’: development of a telehealth implementation toolkit”. Their presentation reported on on-going research to examine the usability and inform future reiterations of the Ready Steady Go toolkit. Feedback from the session was extremely positive and a number of international delegates expressed an interest in using the toolkit to support regional telehelath initiatives.

Sarah Gorst defending her poster; "Exploring
patient beliefs and perceptions about
sustained use of telehealth".

Interestingly, the congress featured two rapid fire poster sessions; offering three minute snapshots of innovative technology-based research and clinical practice in health and social care. Katherine and Sarah defended their posters at the second rapid fire poster session. Katherine promoted the RICHARD project, a European collaboration between four clusters including Yorkshire and Sarah presented “Exploring patient beliefs and perceptions about sustained use of telehealth”, drawing on patient interviews conducted as part of the MALT project.

Presentation of MALT project.
Lizzie Coates (left), Dr Jo Nicolson (left).

Jo and Lizzie gave presentations on the MALT project, although from two very different angles; Jo focussed on staff views and roles at the implementation and delivery phase of telehealth and Lizzie focussed on the methodological and practical issues in observing and effecting change in telehealth services.

The University of Sheffield’s presence, particularly from ScHaRR, was evident and will hopefully help to promote our research on an international level with a number of stakeholders including industry, local government, academia and clinical practice. All RAT group attendees found the overall experience extremely valuable. The networking and collaborative opportunities at the event were particularly notable. 

If you would like to view the presentations you can do so via this website.

We feel that the event was a success and look forward to an even bigger RAT group presence at the King’s Fund in 2014!

Written by Lauren Powell, Katherine Easton, Dr Lizzie Coates and Dr  Jo Nicolson.