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AWARDS UMIC ® UMIP ® UMI 3 CLINTOUCH APP: FINALISTS AT THE ANNUAL NORTHWEST BIOMEDICAL AWARDS 2014 The University of Manchester's ClinTouch project team, led by Professor Shôn Lewis, were finalists in the Healthcare Project of the Year category at the annual Bionow Northwest Biomedical Awards held at the Mere Golf and Country Club on November 27th. Now in its 13th year, this prestigious awards dinner celebrates key achievements from companies and individuals who have made a significant contribution to the biomedical sector during 2014. ClinTouch is a platform to help people with serious mental illness (SMI) to start to manage their own symptoms. It is based around a smartphone app developed by a team of service users, leading clinical and social scientists, software engineers and health professionals at the University of Manchester and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) since 2010. ClinTouch's service user team are central to their design process. ClinTouch works by tracking people's symptoms in real time during the day, via completion of a personalised item set prompted by semi-random beeps. This takes about a minute to complete. The data are then wirelessly uploaded to a secure central server and a database rapidly built up of symptom patterns, severity and triggers, allowing users to gain increasing control over their illness. An SMS version is available which has been shown to improve users' experience of care, and enhance collaboration with health professionals. As well as a standalone app, ClinTouch is being built into an end-to-end clinical management system aimed at averting relapse and rehospitalisation, again funded by the MRC. Following a first episode of SMI, 80% of people have one or relapses over the next five years, usually leading to acute inpatient admission. Such admissions account for over half of all admissions in NHS mental health services. Treatments for SMI cost the NHS about £2 billion each year. ClinTouch will alert the care team at the team base if prodromal symptoms of relapse start to emerge, allowing for early community intervention. Data are streamed into e-health records. The system has now been set up and is being evaluated in mental health Trusts in Manchester and South London. ClinTouch is working directly with several Trusts to facilitate adoption of the technology into the NHS. ClinTouch has now been beta tested and trialled in about 150 service users with SMI and has been shown to be safe, reliable, valid, and feasible, with high acceptability. Most users like it. The key to this is its design methodology, largely driven by focus groups of people with SMI, which has driven the functionality and usability of the interface. Results of randomised feasibility trials are published in peer-reviewed papers. Specific in- house, personalisable modules, either developed or in development, can be added on to the ClinTouch core: medication management, side effect monitoring, peer-to-peer social networking, simple cognitive behavioural interventions. Professor Shôn Lewis commented: "The whole ClinTouch team are honoured to have been finalists. It shows that our efforts to use new technologies to help and support people with serious mental health problems have been recognised. " Dr Sonia Nikolovski, UMIP IP Development and Partnering manager, commented: "We are delighted that the achievements of the multidisciplinary team involved in researching and developing this very exciting technology has been recognised by the awards panel. We are now working together with the team behind ClinTouch to commercialise the technology. We welcome discussions with interested parties." Find out more about ClinTouch at www.clintouch.com Follow ClinTouch on Twitter #clin_touch 17

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