mHealth Round-up: October 2019

eHealthNews.nz: Digital Patient

Tuesday, 29 October 2019

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New Zealand gets surgical risk calculator

Unique New Zealand data has been used in a surgical risk calculator that allows patients to better understand the risks versus the benefits of their operation, taking into account their age, the type of surgery, pre-existing health conditions and ethnicity.

The web-based nzRISK.com is available for patients and clinicians and has been developed by specialist anaesthetist Doug Campbell from Auckland City Hospital. It is a pre-operative risk prediction tool which, allowing for pre-existing health conditions, provides an estimate for the risk of death at one month, and one and two years following non-cardiac surgery.

Campbell says overseas-developed risk calculators have proven to be inaccurate for the local population. “One reason may be the unique ethnic mix in New Zealand. This risk prediction tool is tailored for our population,” he says.

New Zealand schools trial mental health app

The World Economic Forum reports that some schools in New Zealand and Australia are using an app from the Australian Childhood Trauma Group to tackle mental health issues.

Rather than teach techniques like mindfulness, it seeks to build a profile of students that enables teachers to put support in place that meets an individual child’s particular needs, the report says.

Consultant psychologist Gregory Nicolau, the group’s founder and chief executive, says, “we wanted to find out whether students were ready for learning each day and secondly to determine if they weren't ready, what was interfering with their readiness”.

The app asks students to record their sleeping and eating patterns, and their feelings. Nicolau said that once teachers have a better understanding of a child’s welfare "they can look at things like, Are they starting the day hungry or full? Are they starting worried or relaxed or sad or happy or angry or calm?”

Virtual multidisciplinary foot ulcer clinic rolled out in Australia

Technology from Kiwi company Aranz Medical is being used in an inter-agency initiative being rolled out across Kimberley, Australia, to create a best-practice virtual multidisciplinary foot ulcer clinic.

The new service is using the SilhouetteLite + App and Sensor to provide outreach services to over 20 remote locations throughout the Kimberley. The sensor accurately measures wound circumference and captures images using the camera on a smartphone or tablet. The app tracks the progress of the wound healing over time.

The technology captures information required by hospital specialists, and a team at Royal Perth Hospital will collaborate and share this information with essential primary healthcare services in the Kimberley.

This virtual clinic aims to reduce the need for people with foot wounds to travel to Perth for specialist intervention and wound treatment.

New Breast Cancer Foundation app

An innovative app from Breast Cancer Foundation NZ called Pre Check was launched to mark the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

The app includes visual, tactile and audio cues to help people search for signs of breast cancer on screen. If the user finds one, they can learn more about it before being invited to look for other signs.

A ‘how-to’ guide teaches what to look for when self-checking and users can set their own reminder for regular self-checks. This will send a push notification to a person’s phone, urging them to ‘touch, look and check’ and showing them how.

Review shows text messaging effective in helping to quit smoking

The latest Cochrane review of mobile phone text messaging and app‐based interventions for smoking cessation led by Robyn Whittaker from the National Institute for Health Innovation was published this week. This review (an update of a Cochrane Review published in 2006, and updated in 2009 and 2012) aims to determine whether mobile phone‐based smoking cessation interventions increase smoking cessation rates in people who smoke.

The review included 26 randomised controlled studies (involving over 33,000 people) that compared smoking quit rates in people who received text messages or smartphone apps to help them quit, with people who did not receive these programmes. The update provides evidence for text messaging programmes being effective in supporting people to quit. This was the case when they were compared to minimal support or where tested as an addition to other forms of smoking cessation support.

There was insufficient evidence to evaluate the effect of mobile app interventions and so the effectiveness of these is still to be determined.

29 general practices offer video consultations

The Ministry of Health Digital Health Portfolio report for August says that over the past quarter, the number of practices able to offer video conference consults has increased by 70 per cent and the number of practices offering patients access to clinical notes has increased by 25 per cent.

Two thirds of general practices have implemented patient portals and 29 practices are now able to use video conference for consultations. Around one fifth of enrolled patients in New Zealand are registered to use a portal.

The report says the Telehealth Leadership Group is working with PHOs, practices and the RNZCGP to create guidelines and templates to support uptake of video conferencing for patient consultations.

Searching made easier on app library

The Health Navigator App Library now has more than 130 app reviews across more than 50 categories. The app pages have information to help clinicians and consumers make good decisions about using health apps safely, such as in relation to security and privacy and the sorts of features to look for when using apps within a specific category.

To help people more easily find the app they are looking for, a search function has been added to the health app library so that users can search by category (such as asthma), use filters or sort for apps by category, price, device, New Zealand app and clinical score.

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

Southern region live with GP Dashboard

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