Early Indications of Impact in Humber NHS Trial Beat Expectations

By Lorenzo Gordon • 22nd November 2016

Fairly soon after the My Health Guide trial with Humber NHS Foundation Trust and 200 service users began, we had a feeling that good things were happening. Anecdotal feedback suggested positive impact on the lives of service users, and improved communication with their support network of families and friends on the one hand, and professional carers and health professionals on the other.

What we are trying to do is to give people the means to help increase their confidence, and to do more things with support. If people feel more able to do things themselves there is a fair assumption that there will also be a reduction in the number of times the person needs to have contact with health professionals.

We have analysed data on how many contacts 60 of the 200 service users had in 6 months prior to them using My Health Guide. In that 6 months prior to using the app those 60 people had 12,469 contacts with health professionals.

We then looked at each person’s use of health professionals in the days after they have began using My Health Guide. It’s very early days in the trial, but extrapolating the first 3 months data to 6 months indicate that the same 60 people had only 8,636 contacts with health professionals. That’s a 30% reduction in the number of contacts.

We are continuing to analyse the data as the trial progresses, but these early indicators do suggest that use of My Health Guide helps people do more things for themselves or with the assistance of carers as opposed to needing contacts with a range of health professionals. People being more independent, empowered to take action and providing an opportunity for staff to help those more challenged and wanting to learn to be more independent. What a buzz!