Next DHACA Members’ Day announced for 11th January 2016

December 9, 2015 | by

The next DHACA Members’ day will be on 11th January at the Digital Catapult Centre, 101 Euston Rd. NW1 2RA, Membership of DHACA continues to be free; members are welcome to arrive from 9.30, Proceedings will begin promptly at 10am and end at 4.30pm at the latest.

DHACA is still finalising the order of the agenda, however the following have kindly agreed to present:

Deborah El-Sayed, Head of multi-channel development for NHS 111, will talk about NIB Workstream 1.1 – Enable me to make the right health and care choices – an area of really key importance to DHACA members as this is where patients will increasingly interface with the NHS electronically. This will include a discussion when attendees can raise key issues with Deborah, and the Workstream more generally.

There will be a similar arrangement for Usama Edoo, a senior member of the Accelerated Access Review team who will (more…)

Apps, apps, apps – health, care, wellbeing: must-reads for developers

June 28, 2015 | by

Last week we covered two calls for health & care app developers: the ADASS apps event, which is looking for apps presenters, and PatientView which is looking for developers’ feedback on what they need when developing health & wellbeing apps; today we focus on medical app news.

PatientView has just released the results of their previous survey entitled “What do patients and carers need in health apps – but are not getting?” This analyses the views of 1,130 patient and carer groups worldwide. The needs and challenges raised were then discussed in a multi-stakeholder meeting held to help define concepts for new apps that address patient and carer unmet real needs. An essential read for health & care apps developers.

Staying just a little longer on statistics, the CTIA resource library has some interesting primarily US-oriented items including a recent item entitled “One in Five US Consumers Use Mobile Apps for Exercise Tracking”.

As many will be aware, this editor has argued for 18 months now in these columns (& elsewhere) for an official approval process for medical apps that includes a measure of efficacy, so they can be compared, where appropriate, with other forms of intervention such as drugs (in the case of treatment for depression, anxiety and pain relief). Workstream 1.2 of the National Information Board has now published their roadmap (disclosure: this editor is on the Advisory Board of 1.2 and two others) which describes how they plan to tackle this topic.

At the same time MIT has now announced the establishment of the Hacking Medicine Institute. This will assess whether digital health products and services really work and, if they do, help them to prove their efficacy to consumers, doctors, and insurers, possibly introducing a little competition which should speed things up nicely. (For a more detailed review of the workstreams including DHACA’s involvement, go to the DHACA website blog – you will need to become a member if you aren’t already, however it’s free).

The Australians have also just produced the MARS (Mobile App Rating Scale) for ranking medical apps. They conclude that: (more…)