Plymouth Living Lab: Pioneering the Future of Digitally Enabled Preventative Care
Jonathan Cowie, Chief Executive at Plymouth Community Homes, said: “Working with world class organisations including the Centre for Health Technology and CISCO will allow us to form new global partnerships as well as creating positive outcomes for our residents, who will not only play a key part in this exciting research but be able to benefit from brand new technology to help them in their daily lives.
Projects like this demonstrate the real, tangible impact partnership working can bring about, for local people as well for innovative technology companies, and I'm delighted PCH is leading the way in demonstrating this."
The ‘left shift’ agenda seeks to enhance patient care and outcomes by focusing on prevention, early intervention and efficient use of resources. Moving care away from the hospital and into the community and the home will reduce healthcare costs and improve efficiencies. Strengthening primary care and community services, as well as empowering patients to proactively manage their health will be central to this ambition. Digital health technologies (DHTs) and self-monitoring tools present an opportunity to support patients in managing chronic conditions and avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions. Leveraging these DHTs to enable data-driven decision making will help to identify at-risk populations and initiate early intervention.
In the Southwest, a consortium of partners has been working to establish the UK’s largest Living Lab. This is an open innovation ecosystem where end-users co-create, develop and evaluate new technologies in real-life environments. Unlike traditional research settings, these labs operate in an everyday context allowing for a real-world assessment of efficacy and acceptability of solutions. A user-centric approach focuses on feedback and insights from end-users to understand how technology can be augmented to meet specific needs. The involvement of NHS and community providers, industry and academia ensure technological capability, system knowledge, expertise and robust evaluation fostering a truly collaborative environment. Gathering data in homes and community settings providers a realistic insight into the usability and impact of the interventions being tested.
This iterative approach to continuously evaluating and optimising technologies results in solutions that are truly fit for purpose. A Living Lab setting promotes innovation, through collaboration and co-creation but also creating a safe space to test and facilitate new ideas. De-risking these ideas and solutions means higher likelihood of accelerating adoption and scaling.
The Plymouth Living Lab is focusing on improving outcomes for frail community members. The goal is to orchestrate data from various sources to inform decision making and promote proactive intervention. The Lab sits within Plymouth Community Homes, a social housing provider with approximately 37,000 residents across 16,000 homes in Plymouth and surrounding areas. Funded by Cisco Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) and led by the University of Plymouth Centre for Health Technology, the consortium also includes NHS Devon, University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust and community partner Livewell Southwest.
Rachael Fox, Partnership Project Manager for Plymouth Community Homes and Livewell, said: “The Living Lab will provide residents access to test new technology in their homes, provide their unique ideas and feedback, helping developers co-design safely new technology with end users.
I am proud that PCH is leading the way in bringing housing and health services together. The Plymouth Living Lab gives our residents an exciting opportunity to support our local health service, helping transform the way they can deliver care in the community, and shaping how the system can support people to remain independent in their homes - a key priority within our wider Health and Housing Partnership.”
The Living Lab will ensure safety and acceptability of technologies, as well as evaluating their efficacy. Integrating technologies into the homes of frail elderly people has great potential to promote independent living and prevent unnecessary hospital admission.
Residents will take part in public and patient involvement and engagement (PPIE), this could be in the form of focus groups and workshops or testing out tech in their homes. Here are just a few examples of DHTs being trialled in the Plymouth Living Lab:
Deleting Loneliness: successfully trialled in Barcelona, the Living Lab will host the UK pilot of this solution designed to combat social isolation in elderly adults. A videoconferencing device, optimised with a very simple interface allows users to take part in activities (like visiting a museum or a book club) as well as communicating with family and friends.
Remote monitoring and sensing in the home: using a range of different sensors and wearables, data will be used to assess, and risk stratify community members. Logging routines and measuring vital signs means that anomalies will trigger risk warning alerts to flag a possible issue to the relevant clinical and social care teams.
Engagement and communication: prompting users to record daily measures such as mood or blood pressure will create a valuable longitudinal dataset. Micro-nudges to promote healthier behaviours and help manage conditions e.g. warning of pollution levels for asthma sufferers will help patients take control of their care.
Pulling together data from various sources creates a holistic view enabling clinicians to make meaningful inferences and interventions. The work of this Living Lab will build an evidence base for several different DHTs and investigate the minimum viable dataset necessary to have a significant impact on healthcare outcomes.