News

The Department of Health has launched a new website to help healthcare commissioners and providers in England to deliver higher quality, more efficient care and treatment.

Developed in collaboration with the Picker Institute Europe, the resource provides a comprehensive review of the best worldwide evidence, in English, of what works to engage patients and the public in healthcare.

mihealth has been showcased as one of two Health Literacy case studies that illustrate the success of enabling patients to increase their health literacy. http://www.investinengagement.info

Find out more about the benefits of the system to patients and healthcare providers.
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We can now incorporate your organisations branding within the mihealth patient interface to enable the service to fit seamlessly with your current services.

Our patient information materials are designed to help busy health professionals easily introduce mihealth to their patients. Patient information leaflets can be tailored to incorporate your hospital name and branding and the contact details of key staff. Find out more about our packages.  | Read more

Spire Healthcare are launching mihealth across a range of cancers to provide patients attending their flagship out patient oncology clinic in Edinburgh with personal information support.  It is anticipated that the service will grow along with the expansion of Spire Healthcare's oncology clinics across the country.
 

Following on from the success of mihealth in supporting breast cancer patients attending the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, the mihealth service is currently being expanded to support patients with colorectal and upper gastrointestinal cancer.  It is anticipated that over half of the 300 new patients the hospital treats a year will use mihealth through out their care and that number is set to increase annually as survival rates improve.

To make the set up process even easier we have been working with hospitals to identify a set of core local information for inclusion in mihealth. As a result we have developed simple information templates that are Tailor for local use.

For more information about tailoring mihealth for local use | Read more

The success of mihealth has been our user centred approach and we are constantly listening to the feedback from patients and health professionals to continue to improve mihealth and we have added a range of new information and links in response to their comments.

For more about our high quality content and information providers. | Read more

‘mihealth Newcastle’ is the latest independent evaluation report from Liverpool University covering a series of pilot studies exploring the success of the system in supporting the information needs of breast cancer patients.

“Building on the success of ‘mihealth Liverpool’ – an information management resource initially designed to support patients living with breast cancer at the Linda McCartney Unit, Royal Liverpool University Hospital – this report outlines the findings from a second pilot study which has assessed mihealth’s effectiveness in another regional site. What will follow in this report describes the process of developing mihealth Newcastle and its evaluation from the perspective of patients attending the Newcastle Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI).” | Read more

Interim feedback from the School of Population, Community and Behavioural Sciences at Liverpool University has reported a very positive response from patients who have been using mihealth at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle.

The University are currently carrying out an independent evaluation of mihealth and the full report is expected to be published towards the end of February 2008 and will be available for download on this web site. Use this link for a snap shot of patient feedback | Read more

"The report (evaluating mihealth Liverpool) provides an insight into the complexities of the way patients search for and use information in the digital age, the second part of the report applies this knowledge to mihealth to evaluate how well it responded. The authors conclude that mihealth’s flexible and multifunctional design proved very successful in meeting the needs of patients with a range of skills and competencies. This is a thoughtful and well-written report which is strongly recommended for anyone involved in the development of patient information services".
(Magee H (2007) Review of Mihealth Liverpool, Health Expectations, 10, 419-421)
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The BMJ aims to help doctors make better decisions. Often this may best be achieved by helping doctors to help patients make better decisions. Yet recent research from the Picker Institute has found that doctors in the UK are worse at engaging patients in healthcare decisions than doctors in comparable countries. Use of decision aids is only one aspect of engaging patients but it's a potentially important one.

A Cochrane review has found that decision aids improve people's knowledge of the options, create realistic expectations of benefits and harms, reduce difficulty with decision making, and increase participation. | Read more (subscription required)