Technology companies, health and social care providers academics and the public sector are brought together through the Liverpool eHealth cluster to create and share new ideas.
The cluster helps SMEs to navigate that complex NHS world. We give them sector specific business support to develop their products and bring them to market.
Many of our SMEs are supporting NHS providers in helping bring about behaviour change.
Hearing from;
Red Ninja
Nimbus Medical
Studio Mashbo
Knowledge Powered Solutions
We design the future. Our team is multi disciplined, data scientists software developers, designers. We are focused on health and social care.
We worked on the More Independent programme with the CCG in Liverpool. The project was to develop a website to act as an aggregator for assisted living products. It’s a cross between Amazon and Assist magazine to help people figure out the products they should buy for loved ones.
We’re working with Alder Hey, BT and Sony solving the problem on the lack of bond between mothers and neo-natal babies. Mothers give birth in the Liverpool Women’s Hospital and premature babies have to be treated in incubators in the children’s hospital. We are creating a piece of technology that connects with the mother’s mobile device and the Women’s Hospital to she can see the baby and connect through sensors, like the heartbeat of the mother connecting via a metronome.
We’re working with the Walton Centre and their R & D department. We’re working on a couple of projects to digitise patient passports allowing them to move around hospitals more seamlessly and to reduce falls in a clinical setting.
In Hand was developed with Mersey Care to help change young people’s mood and refer them to a care and support system if they need it. This is also being developed with Innovate Dementia to support end users.
The NHS is quite confusing but the AHSN and the eHealth Cluster have been absolutely brilliant. it a good gateway into the sector.
Our service is MyLinqs for over 60s who struggle with today’s technologies with mental health issues and the whole health and social care network. It works through the TV, the most widely adopted technology in the world.
The difficulty we have is that MyLinqs is catered for the person, not one condition.
Essentially MyLinqs is a communications tool but with tele capabilities, Telehealth and Telecare. There are also games, quizzes, music and comedy to enhance the experience for the user. We also have peace of mind for the family to see how the family member is doing. It’s quite a complex arena we work in, not just individuals but across the NHS, HAs and care providers.
Our view of the NHS? We have a few years of experience. Organisations are still trying to understand their new world roles and capabilities. The tariffing affects the current rate of adoption. Pilots to full rollout, there’s little change from the process of procedures so set up take a long time.
We get a lot of positive feedback, both from clinicians and users as well as carers but it’s a complex model of working. We have to engage with a lot of different groups. If we could bring those individuals together, like a hit team, including HR, communications, procurement, if we could have team set up innovation could move a lot quicker. Right now you hit each different level as you go forward.
We’re working with Bridgewater Community Health Trust. They’ve bought it, it’s developed benefits for them. we have HAs, engaged, local authority, carers, GPs with quite a wide co-op. It’s a diverse group of patients forms social isolation, stroke survivors, diabetes. we’re trying to work out the benefits and trying to assess that.It’s at an early stage.
Gavin Sherratt, Studio Mashbo
We’re a digital agency, a traditional web design agency. over the last 18 months we’ve evolved into an app development agency, bringing our customer into that world. We’ve been quite lucky to do a few projects with the team at Alder Hey. We’ve created a few roads where we’ve opened up communication in the hospital.
Everything we do is focused on people and the end user, not the commissioner and we’ve brought that into these projects.
The Land of Remarkable People
Alder Hey are moving to a new hospital. They have loads of amazing people in that organization. We created a storytelling website with a low budget. Most of our projects are under £10k as we offer quick and nimble innovation. We have people like the cleaning lady telling her story as well as people and patients telling their story. It’s not just about the hospital but also distraction therapy. We’re sharing stories of hope and encouragement.
We take photographs, audio content and video giving some of the staff recorders going out and interviewing patients. They put transcripts together, all the different departments started to ask about their own story. The communications team got the whole hospital knocking on their door asking to tell their story. More and more people kept approaching to them so they have this stream of content. With this it transformed their whole approach so we’re working on different projects with them now; same approach but narrowing down to different departments. we also have other hospitals wanting to take the approach from us.
Fresh
A hub for young people and children in Liverpool And Sefton.
We dealt with a group of kids from Cams department, they deal with kids with mental illnesses like anxiety and depression.we were dealing with a group of kids who had tried to take their own lives at one point or other. We co-created a project where the young people wrote the brief, were involved in the design process, we taught them a little bit about code. We created a mechanism about people’s emotions, how are they feeling, lonely, anxious. In the background we’re tracking that information, When they do group therapy they tailor the content around what the website is telling them, around anger or anxiety.
From this projects we’re looking at iterations of this, how can we work with young people to develop this. Digital media is a major catalyst for depression as a window for their lives so we need to give them a chance to turn that around.
We provide a knowledge management solution. It’s been described as “Google on speed” for the NHS. Knowledge management is around managing, communication, sharing and capturing with an audit trail. The idea of having one part of call for all information systems, you control where people are searching and what information depositories you have.
You have frontline, back office staff, the KPS system sits over these depositories. It’s a natural language search so you can type a question or query and it’ll take you to the right section of where the answer lies. You can share that with experts, pushing that information out to people. You have better control over that information, knowing what formation is being used and what isn’t. You’re reducing your operational risks reducing the costs and increasing patient satisfaction.
Lots of people are very short of time, finding information quickly on a daily basis makes them more efficient. We’re a ten person team based in Runcorn but work around the world. We work with United Healthcare in the US, Stanford Hospital and Clinics, South Australian Health, Sussex Health Information Services and Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust focusing on mental health.
Universal Knowledge is quick to deploy, easy to integrate, easy to use and maintain and provides and enhanced self service.