Independent evaluation

'mihealth' Newcastle

“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).”

Strengths of mihealth

. Provides a patient’s eye view of the treatment process.
. Enables patients to become active partners in their healthcare.
. Complements face-to-face interactions.
. Supports patients coping and decision-making strategies.
. Supports the needs of family, friends and carers.
. Easy to use and navigate.
. Does not require a high level of IT literacy.

Evaluation report

'mihealth' Newcastle - Executive summary | Download
'mihealth' Newcastle - Full report Download

'mihealth' Liverpool

This report outlines findings from a series of pilot studies that aimed to assess the effectiveness of an innovative patient information delivery system called ‘mihealth’. It was conducted over a two-year period with breast cancer patients receiving treatment in Liverpool. The product of collaboration between a team of designers at the International Centre for Digital Content, Liverpool John Moores University, healthcare professionals in the Linda McCartney Breast Care Unit at the Royal Liverpool Hospital, patient support groups former patients and regional health networks, ‘mihealth’ combines generic and localised health, social and personal care information for those suffering from breast conditions.

Although the types of information gathered in the course of the study have varied, all the findings that we will discuss in this report relate back to the question that provided the focus of the evaluation as a whole: did mihealth work for the patients it was designed to support? Without pre-empting later discussions, we can report that mihealth did not only work, but that it worked in a variety of ways to expand

1. the pool of resources available to patients
2. the strategies patients used to make those resources work
3. the strategies used to subsequently manage, search for and evaluate further information resources

While mihealth should not be seen as a once-and-for-all substitute for other types of information, we argue that the evaluation demonstrates that mihealth added a new and welcome dimension to the often confusing ‘information landscape’ (Appadurai, 1986) that patients with serious conditions must navigate. Page  1 | Read more

Conclusion - overview

Mihealth, we believe, has shown that it helps patients to discriminate between the two and, therefore, supports patients in exercising choices that are framed within the context of their own conditions. By allowing patients to take control of information on their own terms, this evaluation has demonstrated that mihealth has also proven to be a particularly effective and successful solution to the problem of informed choice as it is seen from the patient’s perspective. Page 70  | Read more

The evaluation report is organised around the following sections:

1. Policy and research background - page 5-19  | Read more
   
   
2. Descriptive overview of mihealth - page 20 – 24  | Read more
   
   
3. Descriptive overview of the evaluation - page 25 – 30  | Read more
   
   
4. Analytical findings: How Patients Access and Use Information 31 - 50  | Read more
   
   
5. Substantive findings: How Patients Access and Use Mihealth - page 51 – 67  | Read more
   
   
6. Conclusions and recommendations - page 68 – 71  | Read more
   
   
7. References - page 72 – 77  | Read more