New technology in healthcare benefits Milnrow man

Brian Hodgson benefitted from taking part in a service allowing him to monitor his health from his home

In Autumn last year Brian Hodgson benefitted from taking part in a service allowing him to monitor his health from his home in Milnrow, Rochdale.

Brian, 70, who has hypertension and diabetes, participated in the Closercare® service, part of a broader project launched in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale testing new technologies in healthcare.

The project consisted of 12 weeks monitoring, followed by six weeks of coaching in health improvement techniques.

The Closercare programme utilised technical equipment supplied by MSD, part of NHS Heywood Middleton and Rochdale Clinical Commissioning Group’s (HMR CCG) Long Term Conditions Early Intervention Testbed programme.

One of seven Test Beds, a national programme run by NHS England and the Department of Health, designed to find innovative technologies and evaluate their potential impact on improving the performance of the NHS. In the programme, the CCG has been working with local GPs and Testbed programme partners, MSD and Verily.

Taking part in the project meant that Brian would wake up each morning and take his blood pressure and weight readings which would be submitted to a nurse via a digital device. The nurse could monitor the readings daily and would call Brian in if his readings were out of the ordinary or worrying.

Brian said: “It was very reassuring to know that my readings were being monitored so carefully. The nurses have been wonderful and have really looked after me. I would recommend this service to anyone who has similar health problems to mine - the whole service is brilliant.”

Brian has been working with a heart failure specialist nurse at Rochdale Infirmary who introduced the new service to him. Brian said: “My nurse Toni explained the whole process to me and then a chap came round to my house and showed me how to use the equipment and submit the readings. It was really easy as I’m not a technical person at all.”

Brian had been making lifestyle changes, including taking more exercise and healthy eating and was taking better care of his own health, after suffering with pneumonia in December 2016:

“It came as a real shock. I was really poorly - I couldn’t walk, my heart rate was so fast and I was struggling to breathe. The hospital took really good care of me and have done ever since. I have lost two stone and have been getting regular checks and taking part in Closercare has helped me to manage my condition even better.”

Brian, who is a patient at Milnrow Village Practice, said that using the technology was easy and he is grateful to all the staff who have helped him and is thinking about investing in his own blood pressure machine so that he can monitor himself.

The Long Term Conditions Early Intervention Testbed programme will be running until June 2018. Programme partner, Verily, will be analysing psuedonymised data, meaning the patient’s identity is withheld from Verily, to predict which patients are likely to develop long term conditions like diabetes or heart failure, while MSD will focus on strengthening support for patients to prevent them from going on to develop these conditions.