Projects | Raparu

Recent projects delivered by Raparu Consult CIC

Recent projects delivered by the team

Digital upskilling

Over the years the team have been actively involved with the digital upskilling of doctors, nurses, health and care staff and members of the public; helping them to deliver remote healthcare and encourage their patients and service users to be more involved in managing their own health and wellbeing. Our delivery has taken place online and in person in a variety of settings such as medical sites, community group settings, libraries and church halls.

We have also initiated digital upskilling of disadvantaged people via podcasts and webinars as well as in-person programmes.

Alexa Project

The team led an innovative project which began in 2020 to distribute Amazon Alexa Echo Shows to members of the public, in order to help them with their health and wellbeing and to reduce their loneliness.

This uptake was excellent, partly as a result of COVID-19. The use of the devices meant that people (especially the elderly) could stay connected with family and friends during periods of lockdown when physical meeting up was not recommended.

Personal digital assistants such as Alexa can be a great boon for people in relation to boosting their health and wellbeing, especially those with long term conditions such as diabetes, respiratory and cardiovascular issues and those who are isolated at home.

We allocated over 400 Alexa Echo Show devices to needy patients across Staffordshire who could potentially benefit from them to make video calls to friends and family, access trusted information about their health and lifestyle, and fix regular reminders for their medication or taking actions, such as being prompted to inspect the soles of their feet at least monthly, if they had diabetes.

My Health Kits

The Raparu team have provided many local people and community groups in Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme with 512 ‘My Health Kits’ over the last couple of years to help empower them to self-care, and hopefully boost their health and wellbeing. The accompanying advice and guidance contained in the Kit was focussed to support people with their self-care and boost their health and wellbeing.

We included an advice sheet in the kit explaining what readings for any device (e.g. a pulse oximeter, a blood pressure machine) to aim for, and what levels they might safely reach, before a person should be concerned, and seek medical advice. We trained the recipients to use reliable health apps, make video calls, and send interactive texts to their clinician or social carer too.

The overall aim of the deployment of the My Health Kits was to empower local citizens to self-care and provide people with the tools to make changes to their everyday lives to manage their health conditions and wellbeing at home. We hoped that using technology to aid the management of their health conditions at home would encourage people to consider exploring more simple tools that might help them to better self-care or implement (and sustain!) a lifestyle change.

There were four types of My Health Kit available as part of the project. Each kit focused on a particular health condition: weight management (297), diabetic footcare (70), stay balanced (mental wellbeing and sleep) (60) and stay lively (maintaining independence at home) (190). Each kit contained a low-level technology item/device and low-cost assistive aids mostly purchased from high street retailers. Each kit was offered in a reusable bag making the kit portable.

Don’t Risk It: Finding Undiagnosed AF In Patients in General Practices in Meir, Stoke-on-Trent; funded by DSUK/NHSE.

In 2023/24 we commenced a programme of work in Primary Care to deliver staff training to identify hypertension and atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients and colleagues. The programme of work involved training both clinical and non-registered staff (including those who were undertaking patient-facing work e.g. social prescribers, health care assistants, care coordinators, social carers), across the 6 general practices in Meir Primary Care Network (PCN) with a KardiaMobile AliveCor 6-lead device and valid blood pressure monitors to extend AF and high blood pressure detection and treatment of their patients.

The trained staff utilized the AliveCor devices at a number of community events as well as part of usual care. Screening was arranged for specific cohorts of patients, as well as opportunistic screening being undertaken at patient events, and in the practices. All PCN staff were able to use the device with their own phone (ensuring no patient identifiable information was used in the screening process) as part of the agreed protocol Raparu CIC advised the PCN on. This wide-scale adoption by the PCN’s six general practice teams for providing direct care to their patients was able to be implemented in a short time-period, as identification was able to commence immediately following the training. 125 newly diagnosed patients with AF were identified between 1st June 2023-31st March 2024 in the six Meir practices.

Finding Undiagnosed AF In People with Severe Mental Health Conditions in North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare (CHC) Trust; funded by DSUK/NHSE

The programme aimed to upskill (1) registered Trust mental health staff with direct contact with patients, to confidently check the pulse or heartbeat of a patient (who has not been diagnosed with AF) (‘detect’); (2) create reliable follow-on-care to accelerate usual practice in providing a 12-lead ECG after AF has been suspected; (‘protect’); (3) create more confident and competent registered clinicians in general practice in interpreting ECG/detection of AF and organising anticoagulation as indicated (‘perfect’).

This approach was a top-level pilot for Combined Healthcare Trust (led by Raparu CIC), to improve outcomes in population health and healthcare, to tackle inequalities in outcomes, experience and access.

As part of the face-to-face training and development in 2024, the frontline Trust staff who attended were provided with a KardiaMobile AliveCor 6-lead device for taking an ECG (40 devices in all), along with supporting user guides and digital aids books and provided with training on how to correctly set up and use the devices. Staff across the Trust were also offered the opportunity to attend a 4-hour online webinar to learn how to interpret an ECG reading. In agreement with the Trust the training session was made into a series of bite-sized YouTube videos by the Raparu CIC team so that these could be shared on the Trust’s training portal and staff directed to these in the future. The Trust purchased a phone for each inpatient ward to act as the route for clinicians to send AliveCor heart tracings directly to a patient’s medical records.

Combatting the effects of the menopause, to help women remain in work

We have run many combatting the effects of the menopause events for women based in NHS premises such as for staff at a local Mental Health Hospital Trust and for the public in community lounges, libraries, with community groups since 2023. The participants have usually been women who want to take more control of their symptoms in proactive ways; especially those who might otherwise retire early from work or are off work with menopausal symptoms or have strained relationships with their partner or line manager.

For instance, when we recently ran a workshop in person for women on probation with a community aid group, we upskilled attendees about how they could combat the effects of the menopause, work stress, back pain and maintain healthy lifestyle habits to remain in work or return to employment. On that occasion, 17 women aged 30-60 years old attended: of the 17 women, ten were in work and seven were not currently in work.

Comments and feedback included:

‘Very descriptive and showed us the danger of health issues.’

‘Nice to get support/info around these topics in a safe dedicated space.’

‘Very informative, dispelled a few myths and put my mind at rest.’

‘Great to hear how to advocate for ourselves at medical appointments.’

‘Looking forward to exploring the digital support, like the apps that speakers recommended.’

‘Very informative and reassuring. The apps look really useful.’

‘It was useful to have information and knowledge to approach the doctor with.’

‘Good to have the book and advice leaflets to take away – thanks very much.’

The Work-Able programme in Stoke-on-Trent

This project was funded by UKSPF funding allocated to Stoke-on-Trent City Council. Our Work-Able programme was a key element in the Wavemaker CIC’s DigitALL programme across the City, in 2023-2025.

We aimed to inspire healthy living by empowering people to self-care and enhance their chances of working and living independently for longer. To do this we collated a healthy workplace kit for 60 local businesses and organisations such as general practices, dentists, libraries, community groups like Places of Welcome and charity/CIC funded.

Our on-line workshops and face to face events, with supporting educational materials, provided access to the digital tools and techniques required to promote participants’ (mainly employees’) self-care proactively, and helped employers and their workforce to be more aware of the effects of poor health on their wellbeing, and thus their performance at work and likelihood of staying in work.

Supporting people with mental health conditions to self-care with The Community Foundation for North Staffordshire

We empowered people with mental health problems to use digital aids for their self-care and to boost their independence. 512 patients and members of the public attended one of our 25 digital upskilling workshops enabling them to:

• Choose trustworthy apps

• Use and engage in video consultations with clinicians

• Safely and beneficially use social media portals

• Use free online learning resources

We also trained them on how to access their medical records, record personal health data and book appointments using the NHS App. Feedback from the workshops showed how well the events boosted their competence and confidence, to empower them to look after their physical and mental wellbeing much better.

Kidney Function Matters: Smart Approaches to Managing Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) – in Hanley and Bentilee, Stoke-on-Trent

The project is based in a deprived area of Stoke-on-Trent with a population of around 33,000 people and is active October 2024 – Summer 2025.

Our overall aims are:

To minimise health inequalities by diagnosing and treating patients with chronic kidney disease appropriately across the patient population of Hanley, Bucknall and Bentilee and prevent their deterioration and thus need for dialysis or a kidney transplant in future.
To increase clinicians’ and other practice team members’ (e.g. health care assistants, clinical pharmacists and social prescribers) awareness of people who are at high risk of having CKD (e.g. those with diabetes, hypertension, heart failure, and/or who are obese) but have not been diagnosed; and boost their understanding of best practice in detection and clinical management.
To increase patients’ and carers’ awareness that they may be at high risk of having CKD, but have not been diagnosed; and what they should expect from their GP or practice nurse to screen for linked health conditions.
To boost the confidence, competence and capability of patients with CKD to utilise digital aids to self-care for their health condition(s), lifestyle and wellbeing better; and better adhere to their medication for their health conditions, thus preventing their deterioration, and in time, preventing kidney dialysis.

We hope to share our positive outcomes from this project from patient, clinician and local NHS management perspectives, by Autumn 2025.

Books

The Raparu team have been involved in the writing and production of 7 books to help people manage various health conditions with the assistance of technology, apps and simple, affordable smart aids.

To see the books and order them via Amazon please visit the book section.