ChatHealth

Safe and secure health messaging service

Project summary

ChatHealth is a safe and secure health messaging service that allows users to have conversations with health professionals via their mobile devices about issues including mental health, sexual health and general health concerns. In the East Midlands, there is 100% coverage across public health teams serving young people and nationally this figure is more than 50%. Our aspiration is to support further adoption of the service across health visiting, mental health and perinatal mental health teams in the East Midlands.

The challenge

To improve accessibility of services and manage capacity, the health and care system are rapidly developing alternative models for people to access information, advice and care – this includes enabling better access to care through settings in the community, such as through school nursing for young people.

For some under-served, ‘hard-to-reach’ groups and younger people, traditional ways to get help are often stigmatised and difficult to access. For example, young males are significantly less likely to seek help in relation to their mental health. Flexible, digital approaches to health and care can help improve access by providing an alternative to face-to-face appointments.

The solution

The ChatHealth platform provides NHS-compliant security and governance for secure clinical interactions over mobile devices. The platform functions to ensure that all calls can be managed centrally making the remote service responsive, clinically governable and safe.

Clinical staff are supported to use the system for single interactions or as a gateway to other services.

The service which was developed by Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and launched in 2013 now has nationwide spread, which has been helped by initial support from EMAHSN and further uptake from across the AHSN Network.

ChatHealth is currently predominantly used in schools to support efficiencies within school nursing. We will continue to support further adoption of the service across health visiting, mental health and perinatal mental health teams in the East Midlands.

Patient quote if required: “I love this service. It’s great to be able to text as I can ask questions I’m not comfortable raising on the phone or in person. Especially little problems that I wouldn’t normally ask. It just gives me peace of mind.”  Service user

Impact and outcomes 19/20

• 100% coverage across public health teams serving young people in the East Midlands
• Over 170,000 messages received from service users
• Available to over 2.2 million young people across 50 NHS and healthcare organisations in the UK
• Available to parents and carers of more than 1.6 million children in the UK
• Chosen by NHS England as an NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellow

Key lessons learned

Several key lessons have been learned throughout the delivery of the ChatHealth project, which will inform continuous improvement and shared best practice across the EMAHSN and future programmes and projects. These include:

• Service user engagement is essential in planning the model of delivery of the service
• Build in sufficient implementation time to allow service planning and training
• Utilisation of the platform will be dependent upon the organisation raising the profile of ChatHealth
• Ongoing clinical service evaluation ensures that the service remains safe and effective.

Contact

For more information about the ChatHealth programme, email:

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