Polypharmacy’ describes the concomitant use of multiple medicines. The more medicines you take, the more likely you are to have an admission to hospital. The iSIMPATHY project is designed to tackle the problem. Dr Clare Scullin and Dr Joanne Brown discuss the project with Christine Clark from Medical update online. Part of the purpose of the study is to decrease inappropriate polypharmacy and to increase adherence to prescribed medicines.
NHSCT has collected valuable feedback on the design of the patient-facing app that will be used during the SHAPES pilot in Northern Ireland. During Phase 2 of the pilot campaign, which took place between February and April 2021, mock-ups of the app created by technical partners were presented to target users, healthcare professionals and support service providers via video call. The feedback collected from participants will inform technical partners EDGE and GNOMON as to how to optimise the accessibility of the app to older individuals. The next step is to develop working prototype of the app to facilitate hands-on testing in Phase 3. This phase will follow a similar format to Phase 2 whereby target users will be given the opportunity to test the functionality of the app and provide feedback on what works and what could be done to make the app more accessible to older individuals.
February marked the start of a new phase in the Medical Optimisation and Control Pilot in SHAPES. Working closely with technical partners we have been developing mock-ups for the use cases to show potential users what the SHAPES app and healthcare professional dashboard will look like and how it will function.
Over the next two months we will be recruiting a small number of participants to provide feedback on these designs. These participants will include older persons living at home with multi-morbidities, clinicians and support staff. Their views will be invaluable as we work to co-design the SHAPES solution to optimise treatment in this patient population. All feedback will be presented to our technical partners and considered before the next exciting phase of prototype testing begins in May 2021.
Following our recently published article about the SHAPES project, MOIC programme managers Dr Nicola Goodfellow and Dr Maureen Spargo were interviewed for Medical Update Online to discuss the future of digitally enabled healthcare for older individuals and share more about MOIC’s involvement with the project.
This video interview was a great opportunity to talk about our involvement with the SHAPES project and reach a wider audience.
The paper was submitted to the journal Pharmacy as part of a Special Issue on Digital Solutions to Improve Medication Management. Entitled “Shaping the Future of Digitally Enabled Health and Care” the paper describes the work that the SHAPES Consortium is doing to support people as they grow older to maintain healthy and active lifestyles. It particularly focuses on the work that MOIC is doing around the theme of Medicines Control and Optimisation and describes the digital solutions that will be deployed in the SHAPES pilot later this year. The paper was a result of a collaborative effort from partners involved with Pilot theme 3 in the SHAPES consortium.
We are delighted that a paper for SHAPES has been published.
The paper was submitted to the journal Pharmacy as part of a Special Issue on Digital Solutions to Improve Medication Management. Entitled “Shaping the Future of Digitally Enabled Health and Care” the paper describes the work that the SHAPES Consortium is doing to support people as they grow older to maintain healthy and active lifestyles. It particularly focuses on the work that MOIC is doing around the theme of Medicines Control and Optimisation and describes the digital solutions that will be deployed in the SHAPES pilot later this year. The paper was a result of a collaborative effort from partners involved with Pilot theme 3 in the SHAPES consortium.
SHAPES is a European-wide project looking at how technology can enable the older population to live healthier lives at home. The Smart & Healthy Ageing through People Engaging in Supportive Systems (SHAPES) Innovation Action intends to build, pilot and deploy a large-scale, EU-standardised open platform.
MOIC and Ulster University are participating in the project for Northern Ireland and MOIC are the task lead for the medicines control pilot. This means we will be looking at how technology devices such as blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters, glucometers and weight scales, if used correctly at home and the results are closely monitored, can lead to early interventions and hopefully reduce hospital admissions.
The project will focus on the over 65’s and the aim is to improve their quality of life at home. MOIC is currently establishing how to select participants for the project and we are working closely with our colleagues at MEAPP.
Nicola Goodfellow is the lead project manager on this and we are delighted that our new project manager Maureen Spargo has started and will also be working on the SHAPES project.
MOIC will work closely with colleagues throughout the EU to deliver SHAPES and in particular Spain, Germany, Czech Republic and Cyprus to promote medicines optimisation and control. We will provide regular updates on our website.
