Website of the Department of Health

Kent, Cornwall and Newham

The three successful Whole System Demonstrator sites - Kent, Cornwall and Newham-  were announced on 23 May 2007, and have since been involved in detailed planning and implementation. The sites are currently in the implementation phase and focusing on monitoring participants and gathering data for the evaluation.  The DH programme team have been working closely with the sites, their delivery partners, project management partners and our evaluation consortia to assist with implementation.

The sites all differ in terms of their demographics and locations:

• Cornwall – dispersed rural population of over 500,000 with more than 10% of people aged 65+
• Newham – one of the most deprived areas in the UK with a small but diverse population of 300,000
• Kent – population of 1.37m with over 200 existing telehealth users

• Download further details on each site (PDF, 93K)

Recruitment

The recruitment of service users at each site has involved a complex and lengthy process. The process was mandated by the evaluation design and approved by ethics. Briefly this process has involved recruiting GPs, identifying eligible individuals, sending out consent letters, and arranging visits and assessments before participants can be allocated to a control group or have the equipment installed.

Evaluation

The WSD Programme is driven by the need to understand the true benefit of integrated health and social care supported by advanced assistive technology (telehealth and telecare). The key to proving the business case is a robust evaluation.  We have pulled together a consortium of UK universities to deliver the evaluation and have worked with them and the sites to agree the methodology and design.  The evaluation will be extremely robust, and has been designed as a randomised control trial, focusing on individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), heart failure and diabetes, and adults with social care or health and social care needs at risk of hospital admission.  The evaluation will look at the extent to which these assistive technologies:

• promote individuals' long term well-being and independence
• improve individuals' and their carers' quality of life
• improve the working lives of staff
• are cost effective
• are clinically effective

The evaluation results will be published in early 2011 and will be complemented by structured lessons learnt to help inform future mainstreaming of this activity.

• Download further detail around the WSD recruitment and evaluation process (PDF, 86K)

Current activity

All three sites have finished recruiting GP practices and participants onto the programme and are now focusing on monitoring participants and gathering data for the evaluation. Over 6,000 participants have been recruited to the programme making it the largest trial of telecare and telehealth in the UK to date. Half of the participants are in the intervention group and half are in the control group. The control group will receive usual care for 12 months after which they will receive either telecare or telehealth services depending on their needs.

Additional resources

Further information about the Whole System Demonstrator programme and some of the telecare and telehealth equipment being trailed can be found in the WSD brochure:

• Whole Systems Demonstrators: an overview of telecare and telehealth

Whole System Demonstrators Action Network (WSDAN)

WSDAN comprises an action research programme involving 12 member sites. In addition, it provides an integrated point of access for published materials on the evidence base in the development of telecare, telehealth and community based telemedicine.

• FInd out more about WSDAN and how to register