Vitrucare
Lincolnshire’s Digital First offer will deliver the Vitrucare platform to provide a digital offer to patients across Lincolnshire.
Vitrucare will offer a personalised approach to a digital health service that will help encourage self-management via a suite of bespoke prescribed digital tools, supporting people to live well in their communities and enabling access to the right support and services tailored to the individual’s needs.
NHS England’s Estates and Technology Transformation Fund (ETTF) were secured in March 2019 to develop and deliver the VitruCare digital platform to support patients to self-manage their health and wellbeing through a range of engaging digital tools. This followed the release of the NHS Long term plan, detailing how digitally enabled care will go mainstream across the NHS over the next five years. This aligns to the strategic vision of Lincolnshire leading the way in the adoption and provision of technology where a clear benefit to our residents can be realised.
This scheme will make a range of appropriate digital support tools available to people within Lincolnshire who require support for a range of health issues, and offer the ability to manage a wide range of common, high impact health conditions via a common digital platform. Teams supporting these individuals, including those from the NHS and the third sector, will be able to interact with patients through the same digital service, allowing them to operate new care pathways and hence manage their patients in a more productive and highly patient-focused way.
Please click on the sections below for more information.
Aims & Objectives
- Digital ‘first’
- Improve both the experience and service productivity
- Personalised - truly centred around the needs of the person, not the healthcare system
- A successful digital system does something meaningful for the user
Offer patients a suite of digital tools including: Messaging Video Conferencing, tracking tools, flagging and automated alerts to clinician, displaying results and biomedical markers in a way that is meaningful to the patient. Educational content through a range of media channels, automated structured Public Health campaigns, targeted signposting to services based on a person’s needs and their postcode.
How will we get there?
- Coproduction with patients, staff, partners etc.
- Collaboration with External Partners
- User Acceptance Testing
- Engagement
- Communication
- Change Management
- Roll out of the digital platform in a phased approach
Achievements to date
Standard Suite of Tiles for the patient to receive at registration has been built for Steps2Change, Early Intervention Psychosis and Gainsborough Place Based Team. The suite for Personality and Complex Trauma is currently in planning and design.
Working in collaboration with the University to strengthen the offer and allow streamline access to services.
We continue to refine the offer with our students who have now developed a chatbot which connects to the Mental Health Helpline, and the next development is e-learning packages to support wellbeing - for example Anxiety, Managing Relationships etc. This has now expanded to the Mental Health Steps2Change team and Pharmacy team, that will support patients with their frequently asked questions about the services provided.
Something that has proved incredibly popular with the students is our digital campaigns - this is an example of a campaign that we sent out to 3,000 students. Campaigns are sent out monthly to the students, we aim for the 1st of every month or the first Monday, as we have learnt never to do it on a Saturday morning. Having students co-produce the design, development and implementation probably explains the reason for such a high click rate of 50%, in comparison to an average rate of 24% achieved in other industries.We have collaborated with the University of Exeter and with their guidance we have digitised the workbooks that are in use with Steps2Change, and made them interactive for the patient. The next six workbooks are currently under development.
Case studies/quotes
“Vitrucare has given us the opportunity to continue to deliver high quality interventions, despite the current situation. We were working on our digital pathways prior to the Covid 19 pandemic, however we have increased this very quickly. It provides choice and convenience for our patients.”
Nick Harwood, Service Lead, Steps2Change"As a service we have always used technology to deliver treatment, however, this has really been the foundation of our work during the COVID-19 lockdown with more use of video conferencing. It has encouraged those who would otherwise avoid it to participate and has allowed our support to continue with little disruption to patient contact. It has also helped those who have been stranded by the pandemic, for example, I assessed a gentleman stranded in Poland with no mobile phone access. I completed the assessment using Vitrucare VCVC and was subsequently able to offer him a digital treatment."
Craig Sanderson, Steps2Change
Need more information?
For further information please email Leanne Taylor, Project Support Officer – Digital Health: leanne.taylor31@nhs.net (VitruCare Demonstrations).
