Falls Prevention Service

Digital Healthcare at Scale: Tools, Training and Best Practice through a Falls Prevention Service

Project lead: Mr Ian Dove (County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust)

One in 3 people aged over 65 and half of those aged over 80 fall at least once a year, representing the biggest cause of death from injury and a cost to the NHS is £2million per year. Poor adherence to exercise programmes has been identified as an issue. A telehealth programme supporting a clinically validated intervention (OTAGO) has been piloted to address the problems. This project will support roll out of the service at scale.

The project will use the InHealthcare platform, already used to support INR testing and under-nutrition monitoring by County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust (CDDFT). Experience has been gained, but needs to be captured and articulated in a way that can be used dynamically by health professionals at this and other Trusts.

This project will analyse, assimilate and translate existing knowledge into a set of tools to support roll out of the digital falls service successfully, looking particularly at supporting staff to address and overcome workability barriers, communicating resource efficiency information to managers and stakeholders. Analysis, qualitative research and tools design will be undertaken by the University of Cumbria.

The project outputs will:

  • Roll out the InHealthcare Falls Prevention Service to achieve improved patient safety benefits.
  • Develop tools and training materials for use by any Trust wishing to roll out similar services.

The project partners will actively engage with 3-5 other Trusts, to ensure that the tools produced are of widespread value.