People in Sefton can now help themselves to live healthier, happier lives using accredited health applications included on sefton.orcha.co.uk.
Health and care partners across the NHS, local authority and voluntary, community and faith sector (VCF) in Sefton have worked with the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Applications (ORCHA) to develop an online health app library tailored to the health needs of Sefton residents.
Dr Peter Chamberlain, local GP and chair of NHS South Sefton Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said:
“This is a fantastic development for people in Sefton. Health apps can provide people with important information to help them manage their health conditions and live healthier and happier lives through exercise and healthy living. The ORCHA Health App Library makes it quicker and easier to access safe, accredited health and wellbeing apps, which can make a real difference to people’s lives.”
There are thousands of accredited health apps listed on sefton.orcha.co.uk and they have been carefully selected to meet the health needs of people in Sefton. They include apps to help people with children and young families, to help people keep active, eat healthier or to support their mental health or manage long term conditions such as diabetes, asthma or heart disease.
Dr Rob Caudwell, local GP and chair of NHS Southport and Formby CCG, said:
“Anyone can use sefton.orcha.co.uk to access health support and information that they can rely on. In addition, we’re training health and care professionals in Sefton on how to use the app library to select specific apps that can help to support the people they care for. For some people using these health apps can enable them to take better care of their own health.”
Liz Ashall Payne, CEO, ORCHA, said:
“ORCHA is the world’s leading health app evaluation and distribution organisation and works with the NHS and health professionals across the UK. We continuously review all of the apps on the ORCHA health app library, ensuring that they meet stringent NHS guidelines, to provide health information you can rely on.”
Deborah Butcher, designate place director at Sefton Partnerships, said:
“Digital health is revolutionising health and care services, helping to provide care that is more patient-centred and empowering. The apps selected for the health app library are aligned to our local assessment of the borough’s health needs. They give our health and care professionals more tools to support care and they give local people access to reliable, accredited information to enable them to live healthier, happy lives.
This is another great example of how our partnership of NHS, Sefton Council and VCF organisations is working to improve the health and wellbeing of people in Sefton.”
About Sefton Partnership
Building on existing plans for improving health and care in Sefton outlined in the Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Sefton2gether, Sefton Partnership brings together Sefton Council, all local NHS, voluntary, community and faith (VCF) groups, Healthwatch Sefton and other organisations involved in improving health and care in the borough.
This partnership is one of nine place based partnerships working within the regional Integrated Care System; the Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership that will be formally established with the passing of the Health and Social Care Bill.
The UK’s first Digital Health Academy, aiming to help build a digital-ready frontline workforce, is now open to all health and care staff across the UK.
A survey from the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA), reveals that whilst 65% of the public are open to trying digital health technologies, only a fraction of tools are recommended by health or care professionals. In total, amongst those using digital health, only a small proportion of recommendations came from healthcare professionals, with 17% of recommendations coming from GPs, 8% from hospital doctors, and 2% from nurses.*
The need to support a digitally ready workforce has been highlighted by the NHSX Readiness Plan and responds to the critical requirement to invest in developing front-line skills for digital health through professional development.
Currently, there is still no mandatory digital health training for health and care professionals, and the courses that frontline workers can attend are often scarcely available. In response to this need, ORCHA, with the support of universities and healthcare professionals, and with financial support from Boehringer Ingelheim, developed the Digital Health Academy, the foundation level modules of which will be freely available at orcha-academy.com and on the Health Education England NHS Learning Hub (learninghub.nhs.uk) at learninghub.nhs.uk/Catalogue/ORCHA.
The academy’s online training modules are designed specifically for frontline health and care professionals who want to use and recommend digital health tools but have been struggling to access the knowledge to do so safely.
The CPD-accredited Digital Health Academy programme includes:
Commenting on the academy’s resources, Dr Neil Ralph, Head of Health Education England Technology Enhanced Learning, said:
“COVID-19 accelerated the rapid adoption of digital health across health and care services and the need to embed digital health in the long term. We are delighted that ORCHA has contributed its Digital Health Academy foundation content to the Learning Hub and look forward to hosting new content in the future, further supporting health and care professionals in their roles.”
Learning about the value the Academy offers frontline staff, Boehringer Ingelheim committed to sponsor the foundation modules. This has enabled it to be opened up at no cost to health and care professionals. Commenting on this, Uday Bose, Managing Director at Boehringer Ingelheim UK & Ireland, said:
“There’s widespread recognition of the need for digital health training for frontline workers, with organisations from the King’s Fund to the Royal College of General Practitioners calling for it.** With six million people now waiting for elective care, and with first-class digital tools available which could support healthcare workers with many of the high volume and low complexity cases, the need to improve digital skills and digital confidence in the NHS has become critical. We felt the academy was a perfect way to address this very real need amongst frontline staff.”
Ahead of the launch, the academy has been introduced to professionals using the ORCHA digital health libraries and the reaction has been extremely positive:
Dr Michelle Webster, Chief Clinical Information Officer & Consultant Clinical Psychologist at Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Partnership Trust, said:
“The ORCHA Digital Health Academy has helped to demystify digital health, strengthen our clinicians’ digital skills and boost their confidence in using healthcare apps. The bite-sized modules are easy to follow, interesting and relevant and designed to flexibly fit around their busy jobs. I would highly recommend”.
Najia Qureshi, Director of Education and Professional Practice, British Dietetic Association, said:
“This is a really welcome resource for our members, who work across the NHS supporting patients with a wide range of health conditions. Innovation in healthcare is introducing new ways of working and is transforming patient care. This programme will help dietitians and other health and care professionals to develop the professional skills needed to confidently use and recommend the right digital health products – helping patients to benefit from digital healthcare”
Reviewing a foundation module course, Dr Joel Brown said:
“It takes quite a paradigm shift to move physicians away from seeing prescribing as an exclusively pharmaceutical enterprise. As medicine is increasingly digitised, clinicians need to take seriously the opportunity to prescribe digital health. The course by ORCHA, as part of their Digital Health Academy, makes this point brilliantly.”
ORCHA has created the infrastructure of the online training portal and designed courses, drawing on experience gained reviewing more than 17,000 health apps and operating health app libraries in 70% of NHS regions.
The team are anticipating training up to 50,000 healthcare staff in year one of the project, with all 630,000 NHS health and care professionals having the opportunity to improve their skills by 2031.
The Digital Health Academy foundational level has been made available through sponsorship support from Boehringer Ingelheim UK and Ireland.
*Digital Health in the UK: National Attitudes and Behavioural Research – ORCHA, July 2021 https://orchahealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2107_ICS_Research_Report_2021_National_final.pdf
**Kings Fund: Digital healthcare – our position:
“Digital technologies are integral to many of the changes envisaged in the NHS long-term plan. Making a reality of these ambitions will require a stronger emphasis on engaging and upskilling the people who are expected to use digital technologies at all levels in the NHS, particularly clinicians.”
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/positions/digital-health-care
**Royal College of General Practitioners, The future role of remote consultations & patient ‘triage’ in General practice COVID-19 recovery: https://www.rcgp.org.uk/policy/general-practice-covid-19-recovery-consultations-patient-triage.aspx
About Health Education England
Our purpose as part of the NHS, is to work with partners to plan, recruit, educate and train the health workforce. Health Education England exists for one reason and one reason only: our vision is to help improve the quality of life and health and care services for the people of England by ensuring the workforce of today and tomorrow has the right skills, values and behaviours, in the right numbers, at the right time and in the right place. We are people centred, committed to the NHS Constitution, and driven by our values of responsibility, inclusiveness, fairness, and confidence.
Our goals are to deliver and reform education to produce the best possible future workforce; to transform the current workforce to meet tomorrow’s health and care needs; and ensure the quality of our education and training system.
About Boehringer Ingelheim
BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM IN THE UK
We are Boehringer Ingelheim – a different kind of pharmaceutical company.
Family-owned. Purpose-led. Innovation-driven: We serve mankind by improving health for people and animals.
Making new and better medicines for humans and animals is at the heart of what we do. Our mission is to create breakthrough therapies that change lives. Established in 1885, we have always been independent and family-owned, meaning we have the freedom to pursue our purpose – identifying health challenges of the future, and targeting areas of need where we can do the most good.
By working collaboratively, we accelerate the delivery of medical breakthroughs to transform the lives of patients now, and for generations to come.
In the UK we do this through scientific innovation – taking on the biggest challenges in medicine. We invest in sustainable healthcare – planning for the long term alongside the NHS and our partners in the veterinary world. We support digital transformation by partnering with innovators to drive healthcare improvements.
More information can be found at www.boehringer-ingelheim.co.uk
About ORCHA
The Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA) is the world’s leading, independent digital health evaluation and distribution organisation. It helps health and care organisations to deliver the right digital health apps, to the right people, at the right time. Its unique insight, assessment, and implementation services are improving the health of the population, the health of our health systems and the health of the health app ecosystem. ORCHA conducts reviews for government organisations across Europe, the Middle East, and Australasia. In the UK, ORCHA conducts reviews for NHS Digital and NHS providers in 70% of regions. NHS England is accelerating adoption across the NHS, placing ORCHA in its National Innovation Accelerator Programme. orchahealth.com
Patients who are supported by the Wellness Improvement Service (WISE) at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board will soon have personal access to a digital healthcare library, thanks to a new partnership with the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps (ORCHA).
ORCHA is the world’s leading health app review and distribution company and has already created Health App Libraries and Digital Health Formularies in 70% of NHS regions in the UK.
WISE will have its own Health App Library that is tailored to assist patients who are on secondary care waiting lists within four separate cohort conditions – mental health, cardiology, IBS/gastroenterology and pain management.
The individual apps selected by WISE clinicians will offer alternative non-medical intervention to a wide range of medical and lifestyle issues.
It is becoming common practice that digital tools are being used to supplement face-to-face healthcare, empowering citizens to manage their own health and helping to reduce NHS spending. Health apps are increasingly being used to support patients and service users with long-term conditions such as cancer and diabetes, and with lifestyle changes such as smoking cessation and diet management.
Liza Thomas-Emrus, Lead Clinician with WISE said:
“Taking into consideration our holistic lifestyle medicine ethos at WISE and the rapid growth of social prescribing app usage in Wales, we are extremely excited to have partnered with the digital health experts at ORCHA.
“Our team views health and care apps as a crucial step on the journey to a more patient-centred, self-managed healthcare approach – something close to our own hearts.
“Social prescribing apps will also help us overcome the current post-pandemic challenges we face at Cwm Taf Morgannwg Health Board, and, with the future in mind, provide an alternative healthcare approach to our population with ever increasing life expectancy and more long-term conditions.”
ORCHA reviews health apps against 350 tough standards, including elements of the NICE framework – and only apps which achieve a score of over 65% for clinical assurance, data privacy and usability are featured in its libraries. Fresh reviews are triggered each time an app is updated, so that standards are maintained.
For further information please email: CTM.WISE@wales.nhs.uk
The founding CEO of ORCHA, Liz Ashall-Payne, has been named Entrepreneur of the Year at the Women in IT awards.
Liz, a former NHS speech and language therapist, founded the Organisation for the Review of Care and Health Apps in 2015 and it has become a global leader in health app accreditation and distribution. ORCHA has reviewed more digital products than any other review engine in the world – 17,000 reviews to date – and it supports NHS organisations in 70% of regions with Libraries of digital health products.
The Women in IT Awards ceremony was held in London earlier this week (28 February) at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House and Liz’s co-finalists for the Entrepreneur category included female leaders from cyber security firm Darktrace and transport solutions company 365 Response.
The judges said they had been looking for a female leader of a technology, digital or e-commerce start-up which had demonstrated excellent growth in the last two-years with a coherent and sustainable strategy in achieving it. Judges had considered growth, standout achievements and customer testimonials.
Liz said:
“It was like being at the BAFTAs. The spotlight was on me as I walked up to the stage and the judges were saying I was an inspiring leader. I was a bit in shock and didn’t quite believe it was true. All the big companies were there – IBM, Amazon and Microsoft. I just felt humble. This award isn’t for me – it’s for the whole ORCHA team.
“There’s a real message to other entrepreneurs here. I’m a clinician by training not a technology expert. I hope this gives people who aren’t necessarily tech-savvy the confidence to try and solve a problem using tech, which is exactly what I did.
“There’s also a lot of research about our confidence as women in the workplace. Confidence is a real issue – we can’t ignore it. We work really hard at ORCHA to nurture our fantastic female colleagues and this award will give us all a boost.”
Use of ORCHA’s services accelerated rapidly during the pandemic, as healthcare staff sought remote approaches to patient care. ORCHA research, published by BMJ Open, noted a 343% increase in app downloads during the first lockdown. Its meteoric growth has led an ongoing recruitment programme, with 100 staff plus senior leadership roles being recruited during 2021 and into 2022.
ORCHA now works in 12 countries around the world, setting up frameworks for digital health accreditation and distributing top quality digital products via its app libraries. Last year it established the Middle East’s first digital health library, in Dubai. It is also working on a pan-Nordic project, and with a leading Canadian healthcare provider. An office is due to be opened in the USA imminently.
However, the UK market remains a major focus and an immediate concern is to overcome the barriers to digital health adoption.
Liz said:
“We’re aware at ORCHA there are many NHS colleagues who are struggling with tech at the moment, as digital therapies come to the fore. It’s a sea change in healthcare and some will find it easier than others. That’s why we are just about to launch the UK’s first digital health training academy, which will offer straightforward, free and CPD-accredited training to every single frontline worker in the NHS and social care.”
The ORCHA Digital Health Academy will be available on the Health Education England Learning Hub (learninghub.nhs.uk) and at orcha-academy.com from late March.