Mobile health and apps news in brief

This month’s mobile apps round-up features news two London trusts are to pilot a health and wellbeing platform to boost staff morale and a new app to manage anxiety has been launched.

Two London trusts trial employee health and wellbeing platform

Two NHS trusts in London are the first to pilot a new employee health and wellbeing platform in a bid to further increase staff wellbeing, satisfaction and retention.

West London NHS Trust and Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) have launched the platform, Juice, for staff.

Funded by Health Education England (HEE), Juice is formed in partnership with HR and wellbeing specialists, Everyday Juice Limited, with the vision of creating a workplace comprising healthy and happy people.

Employees of both trusts will be able to engage in shared learning, access peer-to-peer support through regular on-site activity provision and have available a wide range of health and wellbeing information and advice.

The easy to use platform will also allow employees to share hobbies, interests, and talents with colleagues, encouraging communication between those they may not engage with during the working day.

Wendy Brewer, director of workforce and organisational development at West London NHS Trust, said: “We want to ensure our staff have greater access to wellbeing advice which will improve their mental and physical health. Juice will help do that and our workforce are looking forward to using this platform.”

David Bell, head of human resources at CNWL added: “We know that happy staff make for happy patients and so the wellbeing of all our staff is hugely important to us. We believe this platform will help our staff to maintain and improve their mental and physical health.”

Calmer You app launched to tackle anxiety

Mental health charity Headspace’s former head of research, Nick Begley, and therapist and author, Chloe Brotheridge, have launched an app based toolkit to tackle anxiety.

Calmer You provides a holistic approach to anxiety, providing a toolkit to address the man ways the condition can manifest.

In addition to a comprehensive toolkit, Calmer You also provides a step-by-step course to guide you through a journey to better understand your anxiety; where it comes from and what it might be trying to tell you.

Nick Begley said: “Calmer you is different to typical meditation apps. Firstly, we provide a much more varied and interactive approach because I know people find it difficult to establish a daily meditation routine.

“Secondly, we focus purely on anxiety as it is a multifaceted problem. Anxiety manifests in many forms from low self-esteem, to constant worrying, difficulty making decisions, procrastination, finding it hard to speak up, panic, racing thoughts at night, constant comparison with others and many other forms, so to provide maximum relief we’ve created practices to deal specifically with these issues.”

Chloe Brotheridge added: “For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with anxiety and I had to work out what worked best for me. This is why as a therapist, I teach people many different techniques so they can find what works best for them.

“We’ve included analytical techniques to help you explore your childhood, mindfulness to calm the mind, Compassion Focused Therapy to develop kindness and acceptance towards yourself, CBT to reflect on whether your thoughts are really true, interactive breathing guides to calm the nervous system, and practices to help you sleep, communicate more assertively and many others.”

iPLATO secures multi-million pound unsecured funding for GP app

iPLATO has secured a multi-million pound funding for its myGP app from SME credit specialist Caple.

Caple offers unsecured lending of up to £5m – but iPLATO did not confirm how much funding it has secured.

The company plans to use the funding to invest in its technology and marketing for its myGP platform and app.

Martin Rowden, chief financial officer at iPLATO, said: “Our aim is to transform healthcare by making it easier for patients to better organise their and their family’s healthcare.

“To do so, we need funding that reflects our ambitions.  While equity funding was a possible option, it was expensive, failed to match our vision, and we did not want to dilute our ownership.

“This deal with Caple is ideal for our business as it enables us to develop new products and services to achieve our growth targets.  We have achieved significant user growth and we want to keep our foot on the gas to reach 10m users in the next two years.”

myGP has recently reached 1.5 million users, a 50% increase in active users in the last six months.

It’s an NHS assured app which offers users and their dependents appointment booking at their registered GP surgery, medical record access and repeat prescription ordering, medication reminders, health tracking, e-referrals and a pharmacy service finder.

Advanced capabilities are also available to practices and CCGs who commission the myGP platform including; care navigation, data aggregation for triage and video consultation as well as personalised patient engagement to increase uptake of immunisation, health checks and cancer screening.