Good Thinking is London’s Digital Mental Wellbeing Service, backed by the London Mayor’s Office, Public Health England, London Councils, NHS, and Thrive LDN. It was developed in response to repeated studies that demonstrated that mental health difficulties were common but accessing support was complicated.
Intensive user testing with over 450 Londoners with mental health charity Mind revealed that people do not always fit into categories for, or want, traditional treatment options, and committing to a course of therapy is not always an option. However, the research also revealed that people are willing to use online wellbeing resources about the four most common mental health concerns: anxiety, sleep, stress, and low mood. There is also a desire for trusted interventions that are accessible 24/7, private, secure, online, and where possible free. And people want to avoid stigma by being able to access services in private and at any time.
These insights led to a model of service for Good Thinking that is agile, responsive, and hugely flexible. The elements of the service include using digital marketing to help reach people, a comprehensive self-assessment, clear urgent support information, support in finding offline support, a quiz to find personalized support, and relatable helpful content.
Alongside these elements, it was also identified the program should feature NHS-approved, class-leading Apps that offer choice and a range of ways of improving mental health and well-being, that are based on the best evidence, are safe and secure, and are free for users to use. But the team realized that trust in digital health may be an obstacle to progress and that trust and confidence must be earned.
To address the trust concerns, the products would need to be completely free, without any in-app purchases and they would need to be fully assessed for compliance with the latest regulations for safety.
To help identify the best-in-class apps, the team developed a Standard Operating Procedure, to ensure the program would meet the health priorities, reduce inequalities, and ensure people are offered the best options safely, with an expectation that use will improve health and well-being.
To ensure the program was best informed, Good Thinking chose to work with the Organization for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA). Experts in health app review and accreditation, ORCHA worked closely with Good Thinking to advise on each step of the process.
It was decided that rather than offer a long list of options, the site would instead provide one best app for each health priority, accompanied by a clear usage explanation. This would enable people to quickly spot the most relevant apps for them.
Good Thinking identified a short list of the best apps for each health priority. ORCHA then identified which standards each app had to meet and conducted the relevant assessments of every app. This enabled Good Thinking to select the final class-leading apps.
Examples of apps selected that provide support to a distinct user group include:
As standards evolve and apps regularly update, unlike traditional approaches, ORCHA’s unique platform conducts ongoing monitoring, automatically identifying when an app requires a new review and conducting this. This enabled the program to put in place an important governance step of identifying when an app needs to be decommissioned and removed from the platform.
Alongside the other support services, the Good Thinking site includes a best-in-class app for a range of situations for adults and children, all of which when tested, exceed quality thresholds.
Since its launch in November 2017, Good Thinking has attracted 500,000 users or one in twelve of the region’s adult population. They’ve visited the service over 650,000 times, 24 hours a day, every day of the week, including national holidays.
Alongside all digital health services, it saw an increase in use during COVID, especially during the first lockdown period. Since in-person services started to open up, visitor numbers have dipped, but the team expects to see an increase in the use of digital services over the next five years, much as we might expect in the retail sector.
Over the past year, there has been a great deal of work to ensure Good Thinking can complement other care pathways and services, and assist with demand management. For example, the apps that Good Thinking hosts can be prescribed directly by GPs.
With mounting evidence that mental health problems have become even more prevalent since the pandemic, in the UK, the government has developed a Mental Health Recovery Action plan. Backed by £500 million, it aims to respond to escalating mental health issues, specifically targeting groups that have been most impacted including those with severe mental illness, young people, and frontline staff.
During lockdown, services turned to digital, switching from in-person help to a range of digital services, such as patient-to-clinician platforms, digitally-enabled treatments, mental health and wellbeing apps, chatbots, and social support networks.
As services deliver against the mental health recovery action plan and COVID-19 restrictions lift, we ask: what is the role of digital now?
Click on the PDF icon below to download our report, and discover:
If you are experiencing any issues with downloading the report, or want to know more, please get in touch with us at hello@orchahealth.com.
A reported 40,000 fewer people started cancer treatment in 2020 due to COVID-19. As a result, for years to come, cancer services will need to diagnose and treat substantially more people, with many requiring urgent care.
Throughout the pandemic, healthcare teams adopted new technologies to ensure as many patients as possible could get the care they need. Digital health offers a wealth of features such as patient-reported outcome collection, remote monitoring, and self-management in real-time. There is growing evidence of the benefit of integrating digital into routine supportive care in oncology practice to provide improved patient-centered care. So to extend support again now, digital health should continue to be part of the solution.
ORCHA helps NHS services and leading cancer charities to make informed decisions on digital health, ensuring vital standards are met.
Click on the PDF icon below to download the Digital Health for Cancer Services Report, and discover:
If you are experiencing any issues with downloading the report, or want to know more, please get in touch with us at hello@orchahealth.com.
“Now is the time for everyone to stop non-essential contact and travel.” The year that followed the Prime Minister’s decision to place the UK in lockdown measures has transformed the role of digital health in our lives and NHS services.
There has been an explosion in the demand for digital health. Five million health apps are downloaded every day. But as 80% do not meet NHS standards, over the past 12 months around 1.5bn apps that do not meet standards have been downloaded.
The past year has also seen the rapid launch of new apps and the advancement of much-needed tools, especially when remote care was needed. For example, there are now more than 750 apps to help inform, track, or gather COVID-19 data,1 more than 858,000 people downloaded the Couch to 5K app in 2Q20 – a 92% increase over 2019.2 The world’s 10 largest English-language mental wellness apps saw 10 million downloads in April 2020,3 and who didn’t appreciate Matthew McConaughey and Harry Styles’ collaboration with the Calm meditation app?
To help people access safe and reliable apps remotely, within 38 days of lockdown, ORCHA launched its free COVID-19 App Library available to all NHS and care staff. The NHS also rapidly stepped in to embed safe app libraries into services. An ORCHA App Library was part of the national COVID-19 response in Northern Ireland, bespoke libraries were also launched by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the British Dietetic Society for their members. CCGs and Trusts in 70% of NHS regions now have an ORCHA app library in place, making safe and effective health apps easy to find.
Commenting on Northern Ireland’s app library, Robin Swann, Health Minister, Northern Ireland announced in March:
“We are now able to support people to look after their mental health and this app library provides a one stop shop where the public can access safe and secure apps to help them during the pandemic.”
Cathy Connolly, CEO, Care Merseyside recently reported:
“Apps have been a lifeline to the people we support, particularly during COVID-19. Apps have given the charity a different way we can provide support to people. It has enabled us to give help to people with a wide range of challenges, recommending apps such as Sidekick to help with weight management to Sleepio, to help people to sleep better.”
As we look forward to a return to life outside of lockdown restrictions, we hope that not everything returns to pre-COVID. We hope that:
Sources:
(1) https://orchahealth.com/health-apps-for-long-covid-self-management-report/
(3) https://sensortower.com/blog/top-mental-wellness-apps-april-2020-downloads
