Empowering the voice of Adults with Learning Disabilities
What I did
- User Journeys
- Wireframes
- Rapid Prototypes
- User-centred Design
- Visual Design
- Responsive Design
- HTML & CSS
- WordPress Marketing Site Design & Build
Inspired by Matthew's Book Maldaba and Humber NHS Trust created a tool that allows people to capture and share information about themselves in a way that’s meaningful to them.
Empowering your voice
Hear Me Now provides a way for adults with learning disabilities to record and make sense of the information they are given about their health and wellbeing.
Hear Me Now (formerly known as My Health Guide) was developed by Maldaba in conjunction with Humber NHS Trust and funding by SBRI Healthcare, and was funded by NHS Accelerated Access Collaborative.
Hear Me Now allows users to record details about themselves, in the form of text, images, links, video and audio.
This information can be grouped by the user, into what are referred to as boxes, and each box can in turn be shared with family, friends and health care professionals.
In addition there is a special 'About Me' section developed in conjunction with The Professional Records Standard Body that can be used to record specific medical detail. The app can also be used to store documents, appointments, and contacts, needed for sharing.
My son Max has very complex needs and his carers take Hear Me Now with him everywhere. Anyone who doesn’t know Max, by picking up Hear Me Now, will know Max. You can just press a box (a collection of content) and whatever you need to find out about Max will come up.
Results
A successful trial
Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust and Maldaba carried out a 12-month trial of Hear Me Now, and experienced a 30% reduction in service utilisation.
Hear Me Now has proven to be effective for users for better outcomes, less confusion, greater control & choice, greater confidence, better co-ordinated care.
- One user moved from nearly monthly hospital re-admissions, to avoiding re-admission for over 2 years.
- Service users completed the pre-Annual Health Check questionnaire in no more than 40 mins, 50% faster than normal.
- Smoother and more efficient staff handovers meant better use of agency staff time at national learning disability charity Hft.
- Hft staff support someone’s wishes for more dignity and independence, using Hear Me Now to enable them to perform tasks on their own.
The full story
SBRI Phase 1
Health Enterprise East (HEE), who run the Small Business Research Initiatives scheme for the East of England launched a new phase 1 competition for technological innovations to support adults with learning disabilities. Having worked together before, Maldaba and Ken Pugh submitted an application to produce an innovation to solve the problems encountered with Matthew’s Book, and to make the benefits of Matthew’s Book available to everyone.
The Maldaba application to produce and test a proof-of-concept was successful and during that time we created My Health Guide, the previous name for Hear Me Now before a re-brand in 2020, with Humber Trust in a co-production model, with both healthcare professionals and learning-disabled adults.
Every aspect of the project was tested with both professionals and service users. The name, branding, fonts and colours, language, functionality and features. The co-production model was invaluable. Feedback from service users and professionals quickly set us straight on a few occasions.
As part of the development we also used Marvel to build detailed prototypes. These could be built from wireframes, but more often from hi-fidelity Photoshop mock-ups. We were often able to get feedback within a matter of hours. As a time saver this was invaluable.
The app was tested in both in-patient and day service settings, with users who had a range of mild to moderate learning disabilities. The pilot test results in SBRI phase 1 were overwhelming.
Nobody wanted to stop using the app, and the impact it had on one user with anxiety and depression was so profound that when she went for her regular consultation with her Psychiatrist after 6 weeks using Hear Me Now, he observed such a dramatic improvement in her self-management of her condition that he discharged her from his care.
Following on from the initial test this led to an officially sanction six month NHS trial, with over one hundred learning disabled adults. The results were outstanding.
SBRI Phase 2
Following the success of phase 1, Maldaba, Ken and Humber returned to SBRI for another competitive funding application. Phase 2 funding is designed to take successful phase 1 projects and scale them up for enterprise use, getting them into the real world and embedded in the NHS. New features have been added to the Hear Me Now app following user feedback in phase 1. The cloud back-up service has been extended to a full platform-agnostic synchronisation and sharing service that lets app users grant others the ability to see and contribute to the content in the app remotely, via a web browser.
Hear Me Now underwent a 6-month trial with 200 service users at Humber NHS Trust and its care partners (later extended to a 12-month trial), and the project was independently audited and researched by researchers from the Centre for Applied Research and Evaluation at the University of Hull.
The aim for Hear Me Now during this period was to assess its impact on a larger scale than the handful of users in the phase 1 pilot, and to make Hear Me Now available to the rest of the NHS and learning-disabled population across the UK.
From a point of view of time, it’s much quicker. The information is there. It cuts down my time. It’s a super gadget to work with. It shows Martin that there’s this technology that he can use and work independently, and show others how he’s managing in life and succeeding.
If you are supporting people with a learning disability, this is a communication tool that they have a right to have.
A key feedback tool for health care professionals
One of the key aspects of Hear Me Now was the ability for care staff, but also family and friends, to have access to content specifically shared by the app user. Each box within the app can be shared with contacts added to the app. This isn't a general blanket setting more typical with common social media platforms, but instead gives the app user total control over what they share and with whom. Medical related information can be shared with medical staff and family related information with family. Some of this will have some crossover and that can be tailored accordingly.
All of this information can be accessed by a web interface. As content is added to the app it is automatically backed up to the cloud as part of a syncing process, and when that happens shared information then becomes available. There is also the option to create and send content to shared boxes, send alerts to the app, perhaps a reminder of an activity, and also to build dedicated boxes that can be shared with app users. This might be done by a GP who wants to have strict control over a medication list that is used by care staff or family.
Associated website
In addition to building the app and the supporting interface we also built a dedicated marketing and support, using WordPress and the Timber plug-in and theme, in conjunction with the Advanced Custom Fields plug-in. The primary focus of the site is to provide detail regarding the project, particularly insight for other care professionals. In addition the site offers a detailed set of YouTube how-to videos.
Watch the individual case study videos. View the project at hearmenowapp.com.
