As the NHS, social care organisations, and local authorities, continue responding to the COVID-19 crisis, ORCHA is seeing a growing number introducing bespoke App Libraries to help their patients, professionals and service users find the best health and care apps at this time.

Who has recently launched an ORCHA App Library to help their patients and service users?

Over the past month alone, the following organisations have worked with ORCHA to launch a bespoke App Library to help their patients and service users. These sites largely function as part of the COVID-19 response in the first instance, but also to support mHealth recommendation to patients and service users.

• The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy to support its members, physiotherapists, across the country, providing them with the ability to recommend mHealth to their patients and service users
• Lancashire & South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (LSCFT)’s App Library serves as part of the Trust’s COVID response in the first instance, allowing its healthcare professionals to recommend apps for self-management to their patients
• Dorset CCG launched an App Library to support Dorset STP, catering to health and social care, including social prescribers and health coaches
• Cheshire & Merseyside HCP’s App Library is part of its COVID-19 response in the first instance, and comes free with SilverCloud on Alma Health, where the ORCHA App Library is integrated as an iFrame
• East Berkshire CCG has also launched an ORCHA App Library as part of its COVID response, which has been implemented as an iFrame on the Frimley Health and Care website and Berkshire West ICP website
• Staffordshire County Council’s App Library has been launched in an iFrame with a COVID-19 focus in the first instance, and has been put in place to support vulnerable communities
• Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland (HSCNI) has launched another App Library in partnership with ORCHA. In addition to its Apps4Dementia App Library, HSCNI has now launched a mental health focused App Library, in collaboration with the Department of Health in NI, as part of its COVID-19 response.

Additional organisations who are expected to launch an App Library to integrate with their services soon include: The Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM), Herefordshire and Worcestershire STP, Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin STP, Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust (RDaSH), Lancashire County Council, Home Instead, and Saints Community Development Foundation, the charitable arm of St. Helens rugby club.

This comes at a time when ORCHA is also providing a COVID-19 App Formulary so that all professionals, patients and consumers can access safe, digital resources to help with the self-management of their health and wellbeing. We hope these App Libraries will help to support populations, health and care workers, and vulnerable people throughout the COVID-19 crisis and beyond, facilitating continual access to safe digital health solutions that have been assessed by ORCHA.

Commenting on this growth in demand for App Libraries, ORCHA’s Founding CEO, Liz Ashall-Payne, explained, “Digital Health has a clear role to play to help tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. In both health and care settings, there are good quality apps that can help make a real difference to someone’s physical or mental health. We are driven to help people find them.”

What are the benefits of having a bespoke ORCHA App Library?

To drive uptake of health and care apps, ORCHA provides tailored App Library sites, featuring a range of evaluated apps to help professional health and care bodies meet the health and support challenges in their region. Our platform is safe, efficient, and enables the best apps to be identified. ORCHA also provides customisable ‘microsite’ App Libraries, which health and care organisations/bodies, local authorities, and charities, can purchase to drive uptake of health and care apps. These tailored App Library sites enable clients to optimally target the audiences they want to activate or support.

What does the Pro Account feature entail?

The ORCHA Pro Account is the key to embedding and integrating digital health into day-to-day care delivery. Pro Accounts can be purchased as part of the microsite, App Library package, so that health and care professionals can recommend apps directly to patients and service users. A Pro Account provides all the tools and support required for professionals to interact safely and effectively with ORCHA’s digital health solutions, as well as providing health and care organisations and systems with the ability to monitor, manage and govern all elements of the digital health integration lifecycle.

The Pro Account offers a variety of ways to quickly find and recommend mHealth apps that have been reviewed by ORCHA, including functions such as: Favourites, Recommendations Sent, Recommendations Received, Quick Search, and the Advanced Search features. Professionals can also choose to share links to app Reviews, rather than recommending an app directly.

Why work with ORCHA?

With over 365,000 health and care apps on the market, empowering people and professionals to know which apps are safe and trustworthy is essential. Working with ORCHA allows health and care bodies, professionals, patients and service users to access high quality digital health.

Embedding an ORCHA App Library into health and care pathways overcomes the barriers of awareness, access, trust and governance that so often inhibit the adoption of mHealth.

Our vision is to revolutionise care through the safe integration of digital health solutions into all aspects of health and care services, leading to more patient-centred, effective care.

Where else does ORCHA work in the UK?

As well as working with health and care bodies across the world, ORCHA continues to expand its service offering across the United Kingdom. The below map outlines which parts of the UK we currently work with, and those areas in which ORCHA App Libraries will be coming soon! We look forward to working with more health and care bodies to help even more patients and service users to access safe, high quality digital health resources.

Health apps have grown enormously in popularity, even more so during the COVID-19 Pandemic. As recently reported (1), since early March, more than 500 health apps contain coronavirus-related keywords in their description.

People are taking advice from these apps, often using them to share sensitive information. Yet, in a time of fake reviews, scams and personal data breaches, not all health apps can be trusted.

The Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) today launches a health app formulary to help healthcare professionals and consumers know which health apps they can trust.

As a free to use resource, the site includes reviews of health apps across a range of health conditions relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic, including reviews of COVID-19 apps launched to date.

ORCHA is also offering free professional accounts to all NHS staff for the next three months. The ORCHA Pro Account lets healthcare professionals find and recommend health apps to patients via text or email. This avoids any errors in remembering or downloading the wrong app, and gives the professional a record of who has been recommended an app.

ORCHA measures the health of health apps. It verifies the accuracy, security, and risks associated with their use.  Any app offering special pricing or approaches at this time, if it is particularly useful in supporting the COVID-19 response, or if there are any implementation approaches to support the COVID-19 challenge, is given a specific ‘COVID-19’ label in the formulary.

The COVID-19 Health App Formulary can be found at: https://covid19.orcha.co.uk/

Health Professionals can sign up to their free ORCHA Pro Account here, too.

Commenting on the move, Brian Donnelly, Chief Executive, CECOPS CIC said: “In the current COVID-19 crisis, finding the most effective health apps that meet trusted standards is so important. People need assurance when selecting apps. CECOPS fully supports the timely initiative by ORCHA to deliver a site where technologies that uphold standards can be found. This is a tremendous piece of work, well done!”

Andy Bleaden, Director Ecosystems and Membership ECHAlliance, adds: “We are really delighted to see the launch of his site is a vital source where the digital health community can find trusted information on health apps. ECHAlliance regard this as an excellent hub for health and social care professionals.”

Big Health co-founder and Professor of Sleep Medicine at the University of Oxford, Professor Colin Espie, added: “In these difficult times, digital therapeutics can help to alleviate the overburdened NHS system, and importantly they can do so with immediate effect and at huge scale. This is because therapies such as Sleepio are fully-automated and highly engaging, and deliver cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to anyone who needs it – today. Importantly, Sleepio is what we call ‘evidence-based’. This means that it has been the subject of an extensive clinical trials programme. In fact, 12 Randomised Controlled trials (RCTs) have shown that Sleepio reduces symptoms of poor sleep by up to 76 percent. We are proud to be included in the curated health apps within the ORCHA COVID-19 App Library. This is a wonderful initiative, and we look forward to helping users easily access safe, assured solutions that actually work and make a difference in their lives.”

Alyson Scurfield, Chief Executive, TSA (TEC Services Association), also commented: “Technology can transform the lives of vulnerable people during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these unprecedented times there has never been a more important moment for us, as professionals and the public, to engage with digital solutions, to keep us all safe and well and achieve our health and wellbeing outcomes.”

1. https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252480599/Coronavirus-Be-alert-to-rogue-mobile-apps-exploiting-outbreak

To minimise risks of exposing patients to COVID-19, around 70,000 physiotherapists in the UK alone¹ are being asked to adopt remote consultations. Already growing in popularity, physiotherapy apps are now a vital tool for physiotherapists to improve patient outcomes.

Apps can be used effectively to help in assessment, treatment compliance, monitoring of symptoms, or self-management of conditions, improving a patient’s physical and mental health.

On behalf of NHS organisations, ORCHA assesses more apps than anyone else, looking at clinical assurance, safety, data privacy and user experience. Below are two top scoring apps that are designed to help with remote physiotherapy.

Click below to watch our videos about each app:

GPEP Physiotherapy Exercises has been designed with the help of NHS GPs and physiotherapists with the aim of bringing users access to self-help advice from professionals, enabling users with back, muscle and joint conditions to start their recovery early. GPEP‘s ORCHA Review can be found here.

The question of how patients can best look after their health, especially if they’re in a high-risk category, and whether patients should be increasing their medication just in case, are all concerns GPs have to deal with on a daily basis.

Below, we share how health apps can help those with respiratory conditions. Dr Tom Micklewright shares how he has been using the COVID-19 App Formulary, and gives his personal, practical view on three apps which can help patients better manage their asthma at home.

With 61.4% of the asthma apps we’ve reviewed scoring below ORCHA’s quality threshold, it’s important to understand which apps are clinically assured and safe to use.

Empowering patients:

In the video below, hear Dr Tom Micklewright discuss the importance of empowering patients to self-manage their health, and the role of digital health.

myAsthma app demonstration: 

Dr Micklewright demonstrates the myAsthma app, shares his views, and explores the medication diary, forecasters for mapping out triggers, and personalised action plans which can all be accessed in the app, giving patients more control over their asthma:

Click here to view ORCHA’s review of the my mhealth suite of apps on our dedicated COVID-19 App Library.

Zephyr Guide app demonstration: 

Dr Micklewright explains why the Zephyr Guide app can be great to signpost patients to for their annual asthma reviews, especially when clinicians can’t actually see the patient. The app trains people to use their inhalers properly through a series of simple animations:

Click here to access ORCHA’s review of Zephyr Guide on our COVID-19 App Library.

Smart Peak Flow demonstration:

For his insight into another top-scoring asthma app, Dr Micklewright demonstrates how the Smart Peak Flow app uses a smaller peak flow device to record peak flow in the app, via Bluetooth, or by connecting to the phone jack of a mobile device. The app allows users to monitor their peak flow over time, and gives recommendations based on their peak flow data:

Click here to read ORCHA’s review of Smart Peak Flow on the COVID-19 App Library.

ORCHA COVID-19 App Formulary: 

Where can patients and health & care workers find asthma apps to help during the COVID-19 crisis? Dr Micklewright explains how ORCHA’s free COVID-19 App Library provides a helpful resource for accessing key apps during the pandemic: