The Issue
Menopause affects up to 13m UK women at any time. While each woman's experience is different, it causes up to 40 symptoms, including depression, anxiety, and reduced self-esteem. Despite government guidance that GPs should adopt a personalised, holistic and evidence-based approach, many women report poor healthcare experiences and a lack of support. With huge pressure on the NHS and primary care, more GP appointments or training alone are unlikely to resolve this issue.
Our Innovation
Adora is a digital menopause companion and health and wellbeing app. At its core is conversational artificial intelligence (AI), which provides interactive, personalised support and education for every woman. This type of AI has the potential to transform how menopause is managed.Our team of clinical and technical experts has spent three years building the app, with more than 330 women and 20 clinicians helping to test and develop it. Feedback has been positive so far, with women reporting greater knowledge and high levels of trust.Our aim is to make this app available via the NHS to make a real difference to many women, free at the point of need. In order to be commissioned by the NHS, we need to provide more evidence of Adora's effectiveness and impact.
The Project
We have teamed up with South Medway Primary Care Network (PCN) to pilot and evaluate implementation of the Adora app across its five GP practices. We will proactively engage with primary care staff (e.g. practice nurses, GPs, health and wellbeing coaches) and women going through menopause to understand user experiences and enablers and barriers to adoption. We will monitor user data and feedback (in-app), Conduct a range of user and primary care staff interviews and undertake desk research to better understand patient characteristics and patterns of service use amongst this cohort. Working closely with PCN staff and patients we will assess the app's impact on:
* Changes to each woman's knowledge, skills and confidence
* Patterns of service use (e.g. GP appointments)
* Health inequalities (e.g. strategies to mitigate any negative impacts and ways to ensure inclusive implementation at PCN level)
* Patient and staff satisfaction (e.g. within clinical consultations)