Coming Soon

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49,983
2024-10-01 to 2025-03-31
Collaborative R&D
Pelvic health conditions such as incontinence, prolapse and pelvic pain impact 1 in 3 woman and 1 in 6 men. These conditions are often normalised or considered taboo. Many do not seek help but instead avoid or modify their activities including exercising, working and intimate relationships. This can result in poorer overall health outcomes as they age. For the majority of people, symptoms worsen with age and it takes on average 7 years for someone to seek support. In the North East it is particularly difficult to gain support for pelvic health conditions due to limited service provision and education in pelvic health. There is currently very little available information about prevention, and it is extremely hard to navigate the health services from accessing GP appointments, poor access to pelvic health professionals and long waits to see gynaecologists. A digital solution is ideal for pelvic health as it can remove the embarrassment of seeking help whilst empowering and educating users. We aim to bring pelvic health education into mainstream by making it fun and more accessible through digital innovation. Creating an app that gamifies pelvic floor exercises to promote public awareness and engagement, builds a safe and supportive community and uses AI to answer questions and signposts to clinicians quickly and appropriately. The app will use \#squeezealong pelvic floor exercises, which have been shown to improve adherence and confidence in pelvic floor exercise as well as improve clinical symptoms. It will then use gamification to further enhance this whilst providing handy informative tips to support users to maintain healthy bladder and bowel habits. Through appropriate onboarding, surveys, symptom tracking and the use of AI we will be able to start to see trends in clinical symptoms, adherence and will be able to identify potential areas for development. Ultimately, we hope this project will: 1.Improve public awareness of pelvic health conditions (both for prevention and treatment) 2.Reduce barriers to accessing support and treatment 3.Encourage engagement and adherence to treatment 4\. Create opportunities for much needed research in both digital and pelvic health. This will have far reaching effects across the NHS, society and the environment, by improving population health, reducing the need for GPs appointments, minimising hospital admissions and surgical interventions, improving productivity, preventing the development of chronic conditions, and reduced use of containment products such as incontinence pads.