Opportunity to help shape ground breaking new digital therapeutic tool being made in Sheffield!

The University of Sheffield, is working with Sheffield Flourish and Sheffield Health and social Care NHS FT and a range of other partners to explore the potential opportunities and challenges around using ground breaking digital resources to help people self-manage some mental health conditions.

NIHR Devices for Dignity Healthcare Technology Co-operative

Why is it so important to consider dignity during technology development?

The development of technology to assist or simplify medical diagnoses, treatment and management can provide the opportunity to greatly improve patient experiences and medical outcomes.  However, addressing only the patient’s clinical needs in isolation misses the opportunity to achieve genuinely effective solutions. For patients, their ability to live with dignity can have a big impact on their health and happiness. Truly effective and enduring technologies should therefore be developed with users, and should consider how, where and when they will use the technology; if a user dislikes using a technology, they are less likely to use it. An example of a technology that D4D is developing in partnership with patients and other collaborators is the Sheffield Support Snood collar for people with neck muscle weakness. The collar has been designed to be more wearable and adaptable than other support collars, and is currently undergoing a clinical evaluation.

“Other, more rigid collars were painful – I couldn’t wear them for too long, I can wear this collar for 8 hours straight  – I wear it at work” -Anonymous patient participant comment in clinical study of new collar design

“This collar gives support but also more freedom of movement – I can wear it to drive”- Anonymous patient participant comment in the clinical study of the new collar design

By developing technologies around users’ wider needs rather than just patients’ clinical needs, and by taking into account the needs of everyone involved in a project from early stages, projects can be designed well, and all partners can benefit. 

·       Patients can experience fewer disruptions and exert greater control over their lives, which is likely to lead to greater satisfaction and adherence to their treatment, and better wellbeing.

·       Healthcare professionals are also users of technologies with their patients, so clinical input into device design can help ensure that technology adoption challenges are anticipated early in the development process and can be addressed in the context of existing practices, training and systems.

·       Technology companies can develop solutions that are likely to be better received by the patients and clinicians using them.

The resulting well-designed technologies are more beneficial to patients and users, so may benefit from patient- and clinical ‘pull’, which helps ensure the solution is widely sought, can help drive faster widespread adoption, and helps the company to establish itself more effectively within the health market place.

For this reason D4D works closely with and values the involvement of patients and carers, clinicians, researchers, designers, charities and industry partners when developing technology solutions. By building such partnerships we can ensure that the solutions that we develop maintain or promote people’s dignity - and by extension their wellbeing - at the same time as addressing their clinical needs.

Partners in the development of the Sheffield Support Snood are the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITRaN) at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS FT, Barnsley NHS FT and the Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA).

HS&DR - 08/1819/214: The Impact of Enhancing the Effectiveness of Interdisciplinary Working

Why are we asking for your actionable tools?

A project is being carried out at Sheffield Hallam University in conjunction with colleagues from CLAHRC YH, and is funded by NHS England to develop an online repository for actionable tools for active dissemination and implementation of research findings into practice. They are currently working with knowledge mobilisation experts linked to CLAHRC YH, NHS England,  practitioners and those responsible for professional development to derive a working definition of 'actionable tools', and are seeking out research outputs which could potentially be actionable tools. They will consult a governance team with end-user representation, to determine which candidate tools fulfil the criteria to be considered 'actionable' and hence can be included on the online repository.

The RAT Group have put forward some NIHR funded research outputs to be included.:

This paper is firmly directed at application of the principles: The ten principles of good interdisciplinary team practice.

The following is a resource that has been designed and used as an actionable tool:

InterdisciplinaryManagement Tool - Workbook (this is appendix #2 on the project page).

We have published an evaluation of the implementation of the tool:

Qualitative evaluation of the implementation of the Interdisciplinary Management Tool: A reflective tool to enhance interdisciplinary team work using Structured Facilitated Action Research for Implementation (SaFARI)

This project:

Secondary analysis and literature review of community rehabilitation and intermediate care: an information resource

Has a full report in the NIHR journals library.

Here are the chapters:

• Objective 1. To identify those patients most likely to benefit from intermediate care and those who would be best placed to receive care elsewhere
• Chapter 1. Which patients are most or least likely to benefit from intermediate care?
• Chapter 2. What factors are associated with increased hospital admissions for patients using intermediate care services? 
• Chapter 3. Factors predicting admission to institutional care among intermediate care service users 
• Chapter 4. What factors are associated with increased risk of mortality for intermediate care patients? 
• Objective 2. To examine the effectiveness of different models of intermediate care
• Chapter 5. What team-level factors are associated with the greatest benefits for patients in terms of health status? 
• Chapter 6. What is the cost-effectiveness of different models of care? 
• Objective 3. To explore the differences between intermediate care service configurations and how they have changed over time
• Chapter 7. How have intermediate care services changed over time? 
• Chapter 8. How have referral patterns changed over time and what is the relationship with patient outcomes? 
• Objective 4. Service toolkit
• Chapter 9. Development of a service toolkit to guide providers and commissioners of services

Each of these could provide evidence to inform actions for commissioners and service providers.

Notably, the NHS Benchmarking Network, National Audit of Intermediate Care (NAIC) (currently in its 5th year) has been using some of the recommendations from Objective 4 (especially the Therapy Outcome Measures), and automated data collection methods, which were pioneered as a result of continuation of this work.

University of Sheffield TaCT, CATCH and RAT Best of 2015!

January

The Dementia,Cognition and Care Collaboration, held its final workshop. RAT Group’s Professor Gail Mountain and others facilitated a day focused on how to involve people living with dementia, and their relatives/supporters, in research.

The MALT study team launched their toolkit of resources for telehealth implementation and adoption. All of the tools are available via the MALT website. You can also view a short animation via this link.

February

The Speech Therapy Apps for Rehabilitation (STAR) project started in February. The project is funded by the NIHR Invention for Innovation programme and is a collaboration between the University of Sheffield, Therapy Box Ltd, Barnsley Hospital and Devices for Dignity.

Prof Arlene Astell

March

CATCH Professor Arlene Astell attended the WHO's first ministerial conference on dementia.

Research involving RAT group's Prof Gail Mountain and Dr Nasrin Nasr featured in Business Weekly on the 11^thMarch, 2015:University of Hertfordshire scientists are part of a European team that have developed a prototype of a robotic glove which stroke suffers can use at home to support rehabilitation.

Adopt a Care Home Evaluation was showcased as part of the Festival of Science and Engineering.

April

Dr Jack Parker, Prof Gail Mountain & Prof Sue Mawson published a paper in the Physical medicine and Rehabilitation international journal entitled “The provision of feedback in community stroke rehabilitation: the therapist’s perspective”

May

May 27^th 2015 marked the first Technology for Healthy Ageing and Wellbeing (THAW) event bringing together the general public with those in the NHS, councils, charities and industry to discuss if technology could be used to help older people to lead happier healthier lives.

From the left; Sheila Kennedy,
Martyn Lewis, Deb Tanner,
Tom Downs & Libby Archer.

Sheila Kennedy took part in a radio discussion about a Department of Health funded research project aiming to improve acute hospital care for frail older people. 

Dr Katherine Easton collaborated with Inkwell Creative Arts Media, a volunteer led enterprise offering media solutions and services, to produce a short animation that explores the use of technology in mental health.

Dr Sarah Smith

 

June

Staff from the Centre for Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare (CATCH)spoke and exhibited at the prestigious annual King’s Fund Digital Health and Care Congress

 

July

TaCT's Dr Matt Dexter facilitated a 24 hour Design Challenge: "As a facilitator, I had the luxury of watching the whole event unfold without having to dive in and do the tough job of creating a meaningful piece of Participatory Design over a single day."

Launch of the first Telehealth and Care Technologies Newsletter

Professor Gail Mountain presents "Old Wine, New Bottles" at Design 4 Health Conference.

Sarah Smizz's excellent interpretation of Professor Mountains talk.

August

100 participants were recruited into the multi centre trial "Big CACTUS" led by RAT Groups, Dr Rebecca Palmer.

RAT Groups Sarah Hargreaves graduated with their PhDs. 

September

TaCT supported a short term secondment of Occupational Therapist Ali Madden-Fitzgibbon, from the Assessment and Rehab Centre and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust. Ali was placed with the ‘Valuing Active Life in Dementia’ (VALID) research team in Sheffield, to develop her research skills. Ali's secondment has now come to an end.

October 2015

CATCH's Sarah Smith had her PhD confirmed.

Simon Judge (right),
Medipex Awards.
Image taken fromMedipex website.

Researchers test cutting edge technology with stroke and arthritis population: TaCT Theme members tested innovative technology that feeds back on the way people walk with those post stroke and arthritic knee pain groups.

Simon Judge was a joint winner of the digital health category at the Medipex Innovation Awards.

RAT, and CATCH presence at the AAATE 2015 conference in Budapest.

 

November 2015

The TaCT EnComPaSS project made a strong impact at the Hospice UK national conference in Liverpool

December 2015

Sam Kyeremateng (Medical Director, St Luke's Hospice, Sheffield and Consultant) and Judith Park (deputy chief executive and director of patient
care at St Luke's Hospice Sheffield, Chair of executive clinical leaders in hospice palliative care group) from St Luke's Hospice present at the Hospice UK2015 Annual Conference.

The Adopt a Care Home scheme was featured on Channel 4 News. Laura Di Bona and Sheila Kennedy are involved in the development of this scheme and carried out an evaluation of it. The scheme links people with dementia in care homes to local children.

Dr Claire Craig gave a keynote highlighting the importance of design in healthcare. 

Dr Liz Williams and Prof Arlene
Astell accept their award

A CATCH project team was amongst the nine Sheffield Smart Lab winners that were announced at an awards ceremony in Sheffield. The CATCH project team that was successful was Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing or NANA for short. NANA, led by CATCH academics Prof Arlene Astell and Dr Liz Williams, is a system that monitors the nutritional intake and cognitive function, mood and activity of older adults.