Digital Healthcare and Medtech News
5 Aug, 2020
What is the role of a Digital Health Adviser?
How to make digital transformation work and increase engagement with digital technology.
my mhealth is a clinically led software company that develops and deploys Apps which help patients and clinicians to manage long-term conditions better. Since our launch we have worked collaboratively with 100s of CCGs, NHS Acute Trusts, GP practices and community providers to digitally transform the way they provide care and interact with individuals with long-term conditions.
Through this process we have developed a great insight into how to make digital transformation work and remove some of the barriers which can prevent uptake of and engagement with digital technology.
One of the most impactful interventions is the development of a new digital health adviser (DHA) role.
A DHA is typically a non-clinical member of staff who is trained by the my mhealth digital transformation team to work with both clinicians and patients to improve uptake and engagement with our Apps.
The role of a DHA can include:
- Supporting the process of patient identification and enrolment
- Following up patients, troubleshooting any problems they may have and signposting them to the most relevant parts of the self-management platform.
- Supporting clinicians to optimally use the platform - helping them to remotely monitor and manage their patients.
We have seen an amazing impact from DHAs:
- > 100% increase in the rate of uptake of our Apps
- > 95% conversion of patient registrations into regular active users
We asked Bex, our DHA for the Mid and South Essex STP to share some of her experience of the role and its impact:
What first interested you about the DHA role and made you want to join my mhealth?
I have worked in the NHS for 16+ years, I was first introduced to Digital Health as a clinical manager when myCOPD was rolled out within our community respiratory service.
At the time I had always thought we needed something different than the paper sheets and questionnaires that would be supplied to patients.
After the introduction to digital health through myCOPD I became excited about the progression of digital and was always on hand to help patients with set up and questions should they arise.
When Covid hit I could see the clinical teams scrambling to find an alternative to face to face care and instantly the barriers to digital were removed, clinicians who previously were not too keen, started to encourage patients to perform their pulmonary rehab via the app and patients who had once not had smart phones or the internet acquired them to keep in contact with family.
I always wanted to explore more about digital and when this new role appeared at my mhealth. I instantly applied, and here I am today helping patients manage and monitor their long-term conditions and loving every minute of it.
What is your biggest achievement as a DHA?
I would say my biggest achievement to date is seeing the impact my role is having within a service, I recently worked with a community provider that had onboarded 231 diabetes patients but due to staffing constraints they had been unable to follow these patients up as fast as they have liked.
I identified that 127 of the 231 patients had activated their app so far, I proceeded to send out 90 re-activations. I also identified that only 11 of the patients had completed their education, so I sent out 121 in app messages with prompts for education and how to get the best out of their app, to date I have seen the following improvements
- Activation has gone from 127 to 140, a 10.2% increase within 48 hours of re-activation sent.
- 38 patients have logged on to the app within 48 hours of contact.
- The number of educational videos watched in 48 hours has doubled!
For me this has been amazing. I have always been passionate about working with patients to manage their long-term conditions and this has shown me that if I do this with every provider, I can help patients to use digital technologies at massive scale.
If you're an existing customer and would like to discuss the Digital Health Adviser role and how it could help your service and your patients to get more out of the my mhealth platform, please contact your dedicated account manager.
If you're a healthcare professional or clinician and want to know more about how my mhealth can help your patients, you can find out more at www.mymhealth.com or by calling my mhealth on 0044 (0)1202 299 583
Topics
COVID-19 app asthma app diabetes app heart disease app digital health adviser NHS digital transformationFurther information
Email: info@mymhealth.com
Call: +44 (0)1202 299 583
