Melo delivers successful first NHS evaluation at Salford Royal Hospital
Following a successful 15 month evaluation at Salford Royal hospital (part of the Northern Care Alliance NHS FT) we are excited to share the results and impact Melo has made in improving how clinical teams assess and care for patients with challenging to manage behaviours.
Starting in early 2023, the project allowed us to undertake a range of discovery activities with over 50 individuals from across a range of different disciplines. This helped us define a starting point for Melo at Salford, but also to uncover key insights to help shape further developments of Melo. On top of this, the opportunity to then trial Melo on the ground where it was used to assess and support 100+ patients across two neurorehabilitation wards was critical in our product development journey as we continue to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of Melo in the future.
Along with the Decently team, we had support and invaluable input from the Salford Royal clinical neuropsychology team, led by Dr Alistair Teager. This was so important in getting the opportunity to gather enough data to evaluate Melo’s impact on the ground. We spoke to Decently Co-founder, James Chapman, to find out more about why this was so important:
“Clinical sponsorship and ‘buy-in’ is critical to any early stage innovation. Dr Teager and his team have been fantastic to work with from day one and really felt like an extension of the Melo team. For me personally, having worked on lots of innovation projects during my time in health tech, then this level of true collaboration has been one of the highlights of the whole project”
As part of the initial phase in building Melo, we ran multiple discovery workshops, led by our Product Designer, Charlie Dowd. A range of disciplines, including psychology, nursing and healthcare assistants, allowed us to gain valuable insights into current challenges in the patient journey, reporting and clinical considerations, as well as insights into the various assessment frameworks.
These all fed into our decisions on Melo’s assessment tools and functionality.
Charlie let us know a bit more about this part of the project, and the insights he gained:
“We tried to maximise time with prospective users to define the ‘MVP’ early (‘minimum viable product’ is the smallest value-add version of a product used to release software continuously with minimum wasted effort). Once we released this we had regular touchpoints with users to capture feedback post-launch.”
Across the 15-month project, we initially launched Melo with a small ‘beta group’ of clinical users to collect data on the wards and provide ongoing feedback to the Decently team. Within the first 3 months, we saw a huge 400% increase in the volume and quality of data being collected in the form of Agitated Behaviour Scales (ABS), and Antecedent, Behaviour, consequence charts (ABC), for 100 patients. We were also able to measure the time and resource cost savings of Melo versus current practice of pen-and-paper - with an 89% time saving and improved levels of clinical understanding suggesting that the digital solution is far superior.
Overall, the project has been seen as a success with ongoing plans for further adoption and joint funding applications to NIHR underway in order to continue with where we have got to. We have also been able to write-up and share an increasing body of evidence suggesting that Melo has the potential to make a real difference.
Dr Alistair Teager recently summed up the importance of this success and shared it with us:
“We’re really proud of what we achieved during the initial evaluation of Melo. We feel like we’ve been a part of things from the start, and seen Melo develop thanks to our input, use, and feedback. Being able to reach the target of assessing 100 patients using Melo was a really important milestone, and seeing the interest that has built over time in the clinical and research communities alike is a really positive sign moving forward.”
As a start-up, we are really pleased with the outcomes of this project, as it validates our mission to help people recovering from brain injuries, but also provides crucial input to help inform our plans for the future. We are now exploring ways to continue our work with Salford, as well as expanding our collaborations to other organisations, including Elysium Healthcare, and Liverpool University Hospital FT (where we will be looking at how Melo can also support dementia patients).
The full evaluation report is now available to download here and a short case study video can be viewed here.
