ORCHA are delighted to introduce and welcome Clive Flashman who is joining ORCHA as Director of Strategy.
Clive comes to the team with a strong background and interest in digital transformation in health and care. Clive was one of the leading innovators of Knowledge Management in the UK at the start of the dotcom boom and published in a range of journals at the time. He then re-entered the NHS where he set up a national Knowledge System for patient safety, facilitated a WHO committee, chaired a global HL7 Special Interest Group, and sat on the NHS Information Standards Board and NHS National Knowledge Service.
He is a member of the eHealth & TeleMedicine Council for the Royal Society of Medicine and has lectured and mentored at a number of Universities. Clive has worked as one of a small team of global healthcare specialists within CSC where he was tasked with thinking about how CSC can best position itself to deliver the solutions that the healthcare markets around the world.
We feel very lucky to be able to welcome Clive to the team and we know he will help our mission to “promote better health apps for better outcomes”
Liz Ashall-Payne, founder of the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Applications(ORCHA) talked exclusively to BJ-HC about the complex process of reviewing apps.
Liz Ashall-Payne, founder of the Organization for the Review of Care and Health Applications (ORCHA) talked exclusively to BJ-HC about the complex process of reviewing apps.
“The developer community is at large quite immature; what we find is that when we review an app, the process is so complicated that the app developer cannot possibly know about every single process and every single standard.
“As a clinician, you do not have time to find which app is the best, you do not have time to find out whether they are valid or they are safe; I am a clinician by background, and I know exactly what the challenges are.
“With our review process, we have a team that meets every six weeks so if you’re a singlehanded app developer you are probably missing an element of what you need to do to make your app and that is really important because a lot of our developers are not huge companies,” she added.
[London, UK] A new study shows there is a strong belief among mHealth app developers that platforms “will become an integrated part of the healthcare system” while reducing the costs for hospital readmission and length of stay.
Research2guidance published its 6th annual study on mHealth in October last year, analyzing the current status and trends of the global market.
Since 2015, reportedly 100,000 mHealth apps have been added although the demand side has gradually decreased from 35% to only 7% this year.
The research2guidance study shows that the number of global mHealth app publishers has doubled over the past four years.
Nearly 12,000 mental health apps on the market
ORCHA figures recently showed that there were nearly 12,000 apps dealing only with mental health issues; while approximately 5,000 focused on depression and 3,000 on anxiety.
“At the same time, there might be other health areas where only one or two apps can be found,”
Ashall-Payne explains.
The organization is working with a number of different partners such as universities or the Academic Health Science Networks, which were set up by NHS England to identify, develop and adopt new technologies.
“We are working with quite a large number of both NHS and local authority communities and organisations, predominantly across Lancashire, Great Manchester and Essex.”
On a national level, they are also in the process of collaborating with NHS Digital to look at solutions that would help them endorse apps.
“Part of that conversation also includes talks with Public Health England and the National Institute of Clinical Evidence.
“If we’re looking now at what’s happening with the population, people are already using these apps and most of them have one on their phone; the NHS is still behind,” she concludes.
‘We need better apps than the ones that are available in the market’
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced in September that information from approved health apps will be included in personal health records in the UK, as reported by the BBC.
“We are going to make very big moves in the next 12 months into apps and wearables.
“I wear a Fitbit, many people use apps. What is going to change with apps is the way that these apps link directly to our own medical records.
“We will also in the next 12 months be having a competition because we think we need better apps than the ones that are available in the market.
“We don’t want to develop them ourselves but we want them to be developed by entrepreneurs who have the specialist knowledge and creativity to do this,”
he added.
Before I recommend an app to a patient I want to know three things:
Before I recommend an app to a patient I want to know three things:
On the surface, these questions seem relatively straightforward in allowing me to recommend an app. However finding answers I can trust, in the short window of time I have to spend with my patient, is anything but straightforward.
For GPs like myself, who see the inherent value in mobile applications, this problem is all too familiar. Clinicians don’t have the time to research health apps and therefore, don’t recommend them to patients.
This sets our practice out of touch with how most patients choose to live their lives.
My patients use mobile devices to keep abreast of current affairs, check the latest weather updates, and stay connected with friends and families. Some of them are also using health apps and fit bits to track and monitor their health.
Equally, there are pockets of our health system where we can find really innovative practices. Some UK hospitals are developing mobile apps to help patients manage serious medical conditions and feed information back to their doctors between visits, often in real-time. Health and care-related apps are being used to help with everything from recovering from surgery and managing pain, right through to reminding people to take their meds.
Unfortunately, though, the GP practice is taking last place in the digital revolution race.
It doesn’t need to be that way.
There is now a way for busy GPs like myself to take a look at the 165,000 health and care apps on the market and quickly distinguish between the good, the bad, and the useless.
ORCHA, the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Applications has developed a safe, simple, and highly effective way to validate health apps and provide a convenient rating scale to guide clinicians and the general public.
ORCHA also empowers health and care professionals to identify, engage with and actively promote apps that will have a positive impact on their patients’ and service users’ health and well-being outcomes.
If we as GPs are to empower patients to take ownership, be proactive about their health, and access health care appropriately; then using technology, where we are assured of its value and safety is an important part of this commitment. Great apps can help clinicians to engage with patients dynamically, deliver better care and help preserve our limited NHS resources.
Dr. Sanjeev Maharaj
Read the original article at https://fabnhsstuff.net/2016/11/06/recommending-app-patient-three-things-need-know/