ChatHealth is a safe and secure messaging service that supports young people, parents and carers of babies, children and young people, and adults.
Summary
Young people had a desire to communicate discreetly, without fear of judgement, whilst parents and carers struggled to contact professionals for support. To tackle this need, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust developed ChatHealth. A great example of clinical entrepreneurship, the trust owns the innovation, generating investment into the NHS. It was initially rolled out locally by the trust to 60,000 people before it came to the attention of Health Innovation East Midlands. Rapid nationwide spread followed through the support of the local health innovation networks and by April 2023 it was available to support more than 6 million people to reach NHS services such as school nursing, health visiting, perinatal mental health, adult mental health, young people’s mental health, sexual health and other specialist nursing services.
The innovation
The ChatHealth platform provides NHS-compliant security and governance for secure clinical interactions over mobile devices. It ensures all messaging conversations can be managed centrally making it responsive, clinically governable and safe. Confidential support is provided across topics such as mental and sexual health, and the service has been so successful that it has been expanded to adults.
How the innovation has helped patients and the NHS
- Over 120,000 messaging conversations took place between service users and healthcare professionals nationwide in 2022-2023.
- Over 2,000 healthcare professionals have been trained to use ChatHealth.
- The service has been implemented in over 80 NHS Trusts across England, Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland.
- Potential cost saving and benefits can be demonstrated with this example of one school nursing service:
- Runs messaging service with 0.5WTE staff from within existing capacity at a combined cost (including salary and licencing) of approximately £10,000 less than an WTE post.
- Supports population of 85,000 students.
- Delivers 50 contacts per calendar month.
- The impact of the workforce meant: Helping to eliminate unnecessary face-to-face contacts; and freeing up time for other staff to care for service users most in need.
- It would take four more staff to deliver the same number of additional contacts face-to-face, costing £150,000 a year.
- Jobs created in the project team, known as the ‘Digital Health Transformation Service’ include roles in project management, customer relationship management, technical, clinical, marketing, help desk support and administration. Staff numbers have grown in recent years to provide additional capacity.
- Opportunities to expand into new areas to support the management of long-term conditions such as learning disabilities and children’s diabetes.
How we supported
The local health innovation networks have provided a package of unique support to ChatHealth, with local bespoke advice based on insight into their local health and care systems. Support has included advice on protecting intellectual property, marketing and communications, evaluation and commercialisation expertise, and brokering connections with local NHS organisations. As the ChatHealth service grows and reaches more patients, the collaboration with the Health Innovation Network will be key to ensuring an even wider audience, making it more accessible and user-friendly.
“The hopes for the future are to continue to expand, particularly in specialist areas such as children’s diabetes and epilepsy services where we’re supporting some teams and we’ve seen the potential of ChatHealth. We’re also growing in health visiting, sexual health, perinatal mental health and young people’s mental health services.”
Laura Burrowes, ChatHealth Clinical Lead
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