Q Lab UK teams to test fresh approaches to digital health and care

For the past year, Q Lab UK has been working with NHS England, in partnership for digital health and care. 

We have been supporting teams to develop and test ideas to build staff and patient trust and confidence in technology-enabled remote monitoring so that it can be scaled across the health and care system.

The funding will allow teams to demonstrate their ideas’ feasibility and effectiveness and continue to build partnerships and collaborations to enable better outcomes for staff and patients. 

Find out more about each of the teams and their projects below.

South Tees & What Works Centre for Wellbeing

Intervention: Maximising health and wellbeing outcomes via remote kidney function monitoring The project aims to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for kidney care by introducing a wearable device that monitors kidney function, and provides alerts when readings fall outside defined parameters. The team have identified three ways they can build staff and patient trust and confidence in technology-enabled remote kidney monitoring: 

• Personalising tech to meet the individual needs of each partnership of patient and health professionals.
• Considering the different pathways of care that wearable devices will be deployed in, for example, chronic kidney care, kidney transplantation and heart failure.
• Delivering digital equity so all patients, particularly those undertaking home dialysis, in rural locations with limited access to health care facilities can access the technology that works effectively for them.

Contact Joanne Smithson and Jonathan Murray

Healthcare Improvement Scotland

Intervention: Digital Rheumatology The project aims to develop a smartphone app to enable patients under outpatient rheumatology care to self-report data in real time when they wish/​​need to before consultation. They’re also able to access additional information and support resources. Building on their learning from the first phase, the team will be looking at the triage process to make sure data flows, sharing and monitoring, and workforce planning are built into the clinical pathway. The team plan to work with both NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Forth Valley to continue testing their solution alongside their third sector partner NRAS to allow them to create and establish an evidence base for the solution and define contextual factors for success. 

Contact Liz Murphy

Aneurin Bevan University Health Board

Intervention: TERMS The team will be pilot-testing the TERMS concept in a live environment across educational and clinical services. The team plan to work closely with young people to test out the model using remote monitoring technology kits and agree some remote monitoring of their health within their secondary school settings. The team will develop a dashboard that collects this information across multiple educational and clinical settings in Wales to enable schools, families and services to support young people. During the grant funding period, the project will capture ongoing live data, case studies, and examples of testing remote monitoring in young people with different clinical conditions. 

Contact Alka Ahuja and Gemma Johns

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust

Intervention: Digital Inclusion for Social and Health Impact (DISH project) The project focuses on creating a collaborative, place-based approach between the Trust and local authority to create a shared approach to technology-enabled care and community/​​population health. The team will continue to engage seldom-heard communities and individuals and aim to empower them by: 

1. Providing tools for people to engage in their health and well-being, in the context of how technology impacts other aspects of people’s lives.
2. Produce adult learning training manuals for respiratory conditions and NHS tools. The production of training manuals is in partnership with the adult learning division in the council, patient representatives, health workers, and digital leads.
3. Empower digitally excluded groups/​​patients with technology enablers, for example linking with the local authority to improve access to broadband internet, smart devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and remote monitoring devices.
4. Diversify remote care projects in Hounslow to improve patient discharged respiratory projects and introduce other chronic health support projects across the borough in line with council’s long-term plan.

Contact Sadia Khan