Telehealth with a human touch

‘Nellie’ is a unique collaboration between Staffordshire-based Bitjam’s software development and Simple Shared Healthcare’s telehealth methodology, creating a multinational project that improves the speed and quality of clinical outcomes.

The innovative SMS telehealth system was first developed in 2008, and subsequently rolled out worldwide. Nellie (Australia), Florence (UK) and Clara (international demo system) are all based on the simple premise of a chatbot that any patient with a standard mobile phone can use.

The patient is sent a reminder message to track readings for weight, blood pressure, temperature, blood pressure and heart rate. It is fully customisable by the clinician and can measure a wide variety of data. These systems are speeding up healthcare processes, allowing clinicians and patients to interact and communicate easily. Nellie has also been successfully rolled out in the areas of diabetes, mental health, smoking cessation and weight management. It has been proven to be a highly effective, low cost and simple system, which has enabled positive behaviour change. For example, in the area of weight management, in addition to supporting safe weight loss, benefits have included a reduction in further medical interventions, GP visits and prescribed medication. Reports from other projects are similarly conclusive.

Phil from Simple Shared Healthcare took Nellie to Arab Health 2020 in Dubai, showcasing the system alongside many other latest innovations in healthcare. One standout feature of Nellie is her multi-language/time zone capabilities. Bitjam can configure the system to talk in any language and this unique capability is of interest to the Arab market, so it was well received at the conference.

Cutting edge telehealth technology is extremely powerful, as it allows the NHS to care for more people in their own homes, thereby reducing GP visits and hospital admissions and saving money. Many people are finding the system useful because it is “telehealth with a human touch”.

The system is designed for clinicians, by clinicians, allowing Doctors and Nurses to collaborate on the management of patient communications. Since the introduction of Nellie and her sister systems, clinicians have consistently recognised the importance of supporting patients outside of face-toface care to improve outcomes, due to the benefits seen from improved utilisation of manpower resources and healthcare professional time.

An advantage of the customisable system is that it can be tailored to specific projects such as heart failure pathway. The chatbot will ask the patients for daily responses about how they are feeling, or about their symptoms in conjunction with their symptom checker to increase awareness and confidence of any actions they need to take.