What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can improvement be used to reduce delays accessing health and care services'?

The physical health of people with severe mental illness (SMI) and learning disabilities (LD) is significantly worse than the rest of the population. For people with SMI, approximately 2 in 3 deaths are from preventable physical health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes or hypertension. For people with learning disabilities, premature death from an avoidable cause is 38%, compared to only 9% for people without learning disabilities.

By improving physical health, outcomes related to SMI and LD this will improve and access to services, as many contacts to services actually relate to physical health issues that could be managed in the community better. This work will help to address health inequalities in our service user population.

What does your project aim to achieve?

To support service users of mental health and learning disability services, their families, carers and healthcare professionals to manage physical health better using a mobile app. We know that carers are amazing at supporting those they care for, for example checking blood pressure for those they look after, and the app will help connect the caring activity with healthcare professional knowledge.

This project will help to improve physical health needs of people with SMI and LD to live a healthier, happier life and upskill them, their carers and staff to gain more confidence around physical health condition awareness and assessment.

Similar apps have successfully been used by Health Foundation funded QI programmes to empower patients, and their families to improve their health related outcomes, e.g.  Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS +) that specifically supported patients undergoing surgery and learning from the evaluations of such programmes will be used.

How will the project be delivered?

We know it is not sufficient to just develop and expect people to just start using it. A key part of this work will be developing implementation plans based on evidence of what has and hasn’t worked previously and on what the expert faculty suggests. One of the team members is an implementation scientist and he will help to ensure the implementation on the app is factored into delivery plans from an early stage.

An expert faculty will be formed consisting of service users, healthcare professionals, academics, app developers, families and carer who will develop the plan timeline and agree objectives, outcomes and timeframes and be asked for their views on implementation.

The app will be piloted with service users, healthcare professionals and carers in the first 3 months, then gradually scaled up and refined over time.

The app will developed in English, it will also be translated to other languages

How is your project going to share learning?

The expert faculty will ensure plans are in place to share learning throughout. A knowledge manager is named on the team already and she will support with understanding what has been undertaken previously and which event sharing can be shared at locally. The Trust’s expert by experience team would also be involved with this work and will help develop plans for sharing learning, particularly at local events and charities.

Many team members are also active Twitter users and updates will be shared through social media.

Once the app is translated to different languages – sharing of learning will also be done at events at local community centres and religious sites in different languages as we know certain communities get less support with both mental and physical health.