I’m delighted to write a geust blog for BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care about how palliative care care be improved through use of digital health technology. I also reflect on how this presents an opportunity to learn from the COVID19 pandemic. Specifically, I reference an article by Clabburn and colleagues, which describes the novel use of ‘Ivy Street’, a Virtual Learning Environment to support palliative and end of life care education.
Read my guest blog here:
How could robots help us at the end of life? Check out this open access article I published with some great co-authors.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269216319857628
What is already known about the topic?
What this paper adds?
Implications for practice, theory or policy
CLICK below to access the artilce
I was delighted that our letter about Big Data and palliative medicine was published in ‘Palliative Medicine’. This was in response to an editorial by Peter Tanuesputro which described how Big Data analysis of linked data has the potential to support care by indentifying patient needs. Our letter describes five challenges which need to be considered in order to make meaningful use of Big Data analysis in palliative care.
The letter is freely available in full from the link below.
I was delighted to be invited to write a guest blog for the European Association of Palliative Care (EAPC) website, about my role in developing podcasts for ‘Palliative Medicine’ in my role Digital Editor for the journal.
The full blog post can be found here:
Learning through listening EAPC guest blog
How to access the ‘SAGE Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care’ podcasts
Much written about the potential to use digital tools to reform healthcare, concentrate on the short to medium term (i.e. 5- 10 years). However, many of the benefits from digital health will only be fully realised in the longer (i.e. >10 years) term. This is because benefits arising from disruptive technologies may only be achieved following the implementation of cultural, workforce and infrastructural change, which can take time to achieve.
The King’s Fund Digital Health Conference recenty took place across two days in London (11th – 12th July) and provided an opportunity for profesionals from different disciplines to discuss how digital technologies can be used to transform healthcare delivery in the long term. There were several speakers and workstream groups which covered discussion of the opportunities and challenges of these approaches, in addittion to providing many examples of current use of technological and workplace innovation.
Particular highlights for me was Rob Shaw’s (Interim Chief Executive for NHS Digital) talk about the NHS Digital’s perpective on the importance of utilising health data better to provide integrated care. Also, Nicola Perrin (Wellcome Trust) provided an overview of the ‘Understanding Pataient Data’ project, which looks to improve awareness in society (professionals and lay people) about the value of using healthcare data to support patient care. Furthermore, the Wellcome Trust this year will undertake a project which will examine public perceptions of the role of new emerging technology (e.g. artificial intelligence, machine learning) in healthcare.
Many of the talks at the conference had inter-connecting themes; highlighting the importance of forming policy to shape culture through engagement of wider society and professionals. Although there is evidence of innovative work in several areas, a lot of fragmentation is currenty present. Consequently, it is important for collaborations of partners with a shared common vision for digital health.
As an academic palliative medicine physician I am interested in the potential digital health applications to support the management of people with serious illness. If anyone is also interested in undertaking work in this area, please feel free to contact me.
Further information of the King’s Fund Digital Health Conference (and other events by the King’s Fund) can be found here:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/events/digital-health-and-care-congress-2017
I am currently the Digital Editor of the Palliative Medicine journal (the world’s highest ranked journal, peer reviewed scholarly journal dedicated to improving knowledge and clinical practice in the palliative care of patients with far advanced disease: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/pmj ). In this role I lead the development of podcasts to enable dissemination of the journals’ work to a wider audience. Essentially this work follows on from my foray into the podcast world through my AmiPal podcasts (https://soundcloud.com/mypal), which are podcasts about palliative care, technology and innovation.
On the 14th June I was delighted to present a poster about the development of these Palliative Medicine podcasts at the 2017 North West Annual Medical Leadership and Management Conference which took place in the AJ Bell stadium. The poster featured some initial data on the popularity of the podcasts and some download data. Essentially the podcasts are doing very well with many authors getting into the process of recording podcasts which have been well received.
A link to the ‘SAGE Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care’ podcasts can be found through the Palliative Medicine site here: http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pmj/podcasts
You can subscribe to the podcasts from iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/sage-palliative-medicine-chronic/id1179036261?mt=2
The podcasts are available from most podcast app services by simply searching for ‘Palliative Medicine’. However, if you need the RSS feed to subscribe to can do find that here: http://sagepalliativemedicine.sage-publications.libsynpro.com/rss
If you’re an author of a paper published in Palliative Medicine are interested in recording a podcast, please feel free to contact me.
This evening I had the pleasure to attend a networking event at ‘Sensor City’ Liverpool. Sensor City is a Liverpool-based technical innovation centre and University Enterprise Zone; it aims to support the creation, development, production and promotion of cutting edge sensor technologies for use in a wide range of sectors.
The event was entitled ‘Connected cows and better mousetraps’ and detailed myriad potential ‘use-cases’ for the application of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in industry.
http://www.sensorcity.co.uk/event/connected-cows-better-mousetraps/
The session was led by Mark Maidman, a representative from Actility (https://www.actility.com/) a company specialising in IoT devices.
As a palliative care doctor interested in technology my immediate thoughts are about the potential uses of IoT to support care of people with advanced disease and complex needs. Events like these are excellent in fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration which will hopefully lead to innovation through sharing expertise and resources.
Further information about sensor cities events can be found here:
http://www.sensorcity.co.uk/events/
Are you interested in the role of emerging technologies in facilitating supportive and palliative care for individuals and populations? If so, please free to comment and get in touch with me.
Amara Nwosu 