Moving from development to implementation of digital innovations within the NHS: myHealthE, a remote monitoring system for tracking patient outcomes in child and adolescent mental health services.

Abstract

This paper reports our experience of developing, implementing, and evaluating myHealthE (MHE); a digital innovation for Child and Adolescents Mental Health Services (CAMHS) which automates the remote collection and reporting of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) into National Health Services (NHS) electronic health care records. We describe the logistical and governance issues encountered in developing the MHE interface with patient identifiable information, and the steps taken to overcome these development barriers. We describe the applications architecture and hosting environment to enable it to be operable within the NHS, as well the as the capabilities needed within the technical team to bridge the gap between academic developers and NHS operational teams. We present evidence on the feasibility and acceptability for this system within clinical services and describe the process of iterative development, highlighting additional functions which were incorporated to increase system utility. This article provides a framework with which to plan, develop and implement automated PROM collection from remote devices back to NHS infrastructure. The challenges and solutions described in this paper will be pertinent to other digital health innovation researchers aspiring to deploy interoperable systems within NHS clinical systems.