Hampshire Healthy Families: Patient engagement made personal

THE BRIEF

Mindwave successfully delivered a Trust-wide PEP for Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, specifically for parental proxy access. The PEP has a strong focus on parents and carers of Children and Young People (CYP). The portal offers digital access to manage appointments, view their child’s health history, access various resources about children’s health, and provide feedback through short questionnaires.

Parents also receive notifications of new appointments or messages and have the ability to set language preferences using Google Translate. Southern Health wanted to fully digitise their services, providing an easy-to-use, safe, and informative space for parents and carers.

88%

of parents found the sign-up process straightforward

SOLUTION AND DELIVERY

To ensure Southern Healths’ requirements were met whilst addressing the needs of the patient’s parents, the PEP was developed collaboratively with stakeholders, including parents, clinicians, and other healthcare professionals. The PEP was delivered in phases, with progress tracked through regular highlight reports and weekly meetings with the Southern Healths’ project team, fostering effective communication and collaboration.

100%

of parents agreed that all features of the PEP were valuable in their child’s healthcare journey

MEASURING IMPACT

The digital portal was named PIP, was launched in 2022, and feedback from parents has been recently gathered to define future development.

A questionnaire was sent to parents of 838 children, with 367 completing it. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with 88% of parents finding the sign-up process straightforward and 100% agreeing that the portal’s features, such as managing their children’s care through proxy access, appointment booking, accessing information, receiving notifications, and navigating the portal, were all positive aspects of PIP.

The feedback also provided valuable suggestions for improvements, which Mindwave and Southern Health are currently planning to implement in future updates. Overall, PIP has proven to be a successful and well-received solution, addressing the needs of parents and carers and enhancing the delivery of healthcare services for CYP at Southern Health.

Helena (32) parent of Joshua, says:

“As a working mum my time is filled with juggling work and home life. Looking at the post is probably bottom of the list which means I can often miss letters that come through or I pick them up later than I should. When I learnt that there was the option to receive information via a portal about my son from the Health Visiting service I jumped at the chance to register. The registration was really straight forward and logging in is a breeze – having to put a secondary code really gives me confidence that the information is secure.
The email notifications letting me know that there is information available to look at or a letter to read is so handy. Being able to access the information electronically means I am getting information quicker and has really made my life that little bit easier. It also means I am not searching for bits of paper when I need previous information as I can log into the portal to look at previous letters within minutes. I really recommend that other parents register and use the portal to make things that little bit easier.”