The NHS.uk website averaged over 2,000 visitors per minute in 2022 and, while websites are hardly considered cutting edge, this technology is important to help make trusted and reliable health and care knowledge easily accessible to patients and the public. Web-based information, alongside access to medical records and personalised care initiatives, means people are potentially more informed to make decisions and be actively involved in their own care.
This study examined how health and social care professionals and managers perceive the effects of digitalisation on the work of professionals.
Open Access Article
Even across such a broad group there was good agreement about both the challenges facing adult social care and the type of social care system people wanted to see.
There were also many examples of technology being effectively used to improve quality and ensure better choice and control, as well as generating efficiencies. These examples gave a glimpse of the potential for technology to benefit those that draw on services, carers, staff and organisations.
An infinite number of fitness apps are available on various app stores. However, hardly any of them are fitted to the needs and requirements of care-dependent people. This paper investigates the effectiveness of a customised fitness-app prototype for increasing physical activity in home care service users. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Findings Several barriers and facilitators to the use of digital technology were identified, including around infrastructure, time, skills, training, support, leadership, familiarity and confidence. The use of digital technology may enhance care consistency and increase patient autonomy, but it may also erode nurse-patient relationships.
Conclusion Digital technology can enhance patient care but organisational barriers, notably in relation to digital literacy training, need to be addressed for nurses to fully adopt it.
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Commentary on: Bhatia R, Gilliam E, Aliberti G, Pinheiro A, Karamourtopoulos M, Davis RB, DesRochers L, Schonberg MA. Older adults' perspectives on primary care telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Implications for practice and research
As the undoubtful potential of telemedicine was proved during the last pandemic, older adults’ experience with telemedicine must be recognised and understood.
In order to maximise the profits of telemedicine, further initiatives, should be employed to satisfy the challenges that old people may experience in accessing telemedicine services.
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We aimed to identify the factors associated with satisfaction with telerehabilitation in families with children with neurodevelopmental disorders through a program that included physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
As mental health professionals we are often asked to provide recommendations for trustworthy apps to support young peoples’ mental health. This review demonstrates why this is a hard task: there are many apps which seem appealing to young people but have no evidence-base, and only a handful of apps with a sound evidence-base which are available to young people.
VR may be an effective environment for psychosis patients with agoraphobia. Although patients are aware that VR environments are not real, they very closely match real-world experiences and allow for greater engagement with treatment (Lambe et al., 2020). Psychosis patients are more likely to enter situations within VR that they would otherwise find incredibly distressing in the real world and this allows a safe space for experimentation (Lambe et al., 2020).
The Digital apps and reducing ethnic health inequalities report, published by the NHS Race and Health Observatory, measured the variation in use and experience of online apps by ethnicity. It then used the findings to make a series of recommendations for NHS leaders and providers.
Designed to be used by health and care commissioners, service leads, and digital teams, the framework aims to understand and mitigate the barriers people often face when trying to access digital health and care services, that result in digital exclusion.
Research into digital exclusion shows that there are links between those more likely to be digitally excluded and those more at risk of health inequalities.
This review shows that AI application in wound care offers benefits in the assessment/diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of acute and hard-to-heal wounds. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
The role of digital technology in the delivery of patient care was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic when remote triage and consultations became part of everyday practice in healthcare settings. Yet despite growing evidence that a digitally literate nursing workforce can support and enhance patient safety and outcomes, many nurses report a reluctance to engage in the use of digital technology.
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This document builds on previous NHS Digital guidance on digital inclusion for health and social care.
Use it to design and implement inclusive digital approaches and technologies, which are complementary to non-digital services and support.
Online symptom checkers are a way to address patient concerns and potentially offload a burdened healthcare system. However, safety outcomes of self-triage are unknown, so we reviewed triage recommendations and outcomes of our institution's depression symptom checker.
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Connected: Remote technology in mental health services finds that using remote technology can improve access to mental health support for rural communities, disabled people or people needing a specialist service far from home. It has the potential to increase access and choice in mental health care.
This article evaluates the performance of chat generative pre-trained transformer (ChatGPT) in key domains of clinical pharmacy practice, including prescription review, patient medication education, adverse drug reaction (ADR) recognition, ADR causality assessment, and drug counselling. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Implications for practice and research
Digital mental health interventions may be useful to complement in-person mental health services, with sufficient supports for meaningful use.
User-centred design research with adults with intellectual disabilities and supporters is needed at all phases of digital mental health intervention development and evaluation.
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The review showed that robust evidence for the effectiveness of iCBT as an add-on to TAU is still limited, with results not necessarily generalisable to people from different backgrounds based on age, gender, education, and mental healthcare settings. Clearly more research is needed, as remotely delivered, self-guided iCBT has the promise to increase accessibility and be more cost-effective.
Resources to support dementia carers from ethnically diverse families are limited. We explored carers’ and service providers’ views on adapting the World Health Organization’s iSupport Lite messages to meet their needs.
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