research

Optimising Outpatients: Effective service transformation through face-to-face, remote and digital care delivery.

Theme Group: Improving care

Sub Theme: Digital care

Status: Active

Project overview:

The number of people living with a neurological condition is increasing. This means there will be increasing demand on existing services. One way forward is to use video appointments, telephone appointments and mobile phone apps in outpatient care.
However, we need to know how best to do this without decreasing the quality of care for patients.

The first step in this project is to find out what people think about video, telephone and health apps in outpatient care. To do this, we will analyse:

• A recent survey by the Neurological Alliance (this looks at views of people living with neurological conditions)
• A recent survey by the Association of British Neurologists (this looks at views of consultant neurologists)
• Recent research by our group looking at what people living with neurological conditions value in outpatient appointments

The second step is to carry out workshops to discuss these findings. We will invite people living with neurological conditions, carers, healthcare professionals and those involved in organising the outpatient services.

We will all work together to come up with recommendations about:

• How best to combine face-to-face appointments and appointments by video or by telephone.
• The best use of other technology, such as online patient portals (in Southampton this is called My Medical Record), mobile health apps or wearable health sensors

The third step is to hold interviews and focus groups to see how acceptable and feasible these recommendations are.

Taking Part
We are currently looking for :

• People having neurology outpatient appointments
• People who care for someone who is currently having neurology outpatient appointments
• Professionals involved in neurology outpatient care

to take part in workshops, interviews and focus groups. These will be held in person and online.

For more information on taking part in our research, please contact Patricia in the research team on 07876818404 or email NeuroLTC@soton.ac.uk

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Researchers:

Portrait image of Chris Kipps

Professor Chris Kipps

Role: Consultant Neurologist

Chris is a Consultant Neurologist with subspecialty interest in behavioural neurology and cognitive disorders, and Professor of Clinical Neurology and Dementia at University Hospital Southampton and the University of Southampton. He leads the Cognitive Disorders service at the Wessex Neurological Centre.

Chris is Clinical Director for Research and Development at...

Portrait image of Sarah Fearn

Dr Sarah Fearn

Role: Senior Research Fellow

Sarah joined the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton as a Senior Research Fellow in 2016 and has extensive experience carrying out research into care for people with long-term neurological conditions.

Sarah’s research often focuses on the patient perspective and she is keen to increase the participation of...

Dr Patricia Fuller

Role: Research Fellow

Patricia is a Research Fellow within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton.

She is currently working on the Optimising Outpatients project. This project is using interview and focus group data from our research group together with survey data from the Neurological Alliance and Association of British Neurologists...

Supporting documents:

Patient Information sheet