Mobile phone app - supporting people to 'get the right treatment'
A mobile phone app was integral to our behaviour change work with NHS Coventry, addressing the inappropriate use of unscheduled and urgent care services in the city. We developed the Get the Right Treatment concept to address a significant rise in the use of A&E, which was seeing approximately 600 patients on average each day.
Insight research had highlighted a range of complex behaviours around the inappropriate use of health services in Coventry. To engage diverse socio-economic groups, we developed the Get the Right Treatment campaign around the concept of making sure people ‘get the right treatment, at the right time’ and being a ‘time chooser, not a time loser’.
Our multi-faceted social change approach included the creation of an innovative mobile phone app to help communities take control of their own health. The app displays information on GPs, pharmacies, A&E, walk in centres and sexual health services across the city.
This bespoke digital technology has proved to be a great way of communicating key public health information to some of Coventry’s hardest-to-reach audiences and the Get The Right Treatment concept is now being replicated by NHS Trusts across the West Midlands region.
