My Health Tools
My Health Tools is an online tool, developed in Kirklees, to help support people to manage their long-term conditions.
It has been designed with and for local people, and provides access to a wealth of trustworthy information and resources giving people more choices and the opportunity to access extra support.
About
Underpinned by proven Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques, My Health Tools encourages behavioural change by supporting users to achieve measurable goals. It takes a ‘whole-person’ approach that promotes independent decision-making – and access to varied, quality assured resources tailored by the platform to meet the needs of the individual.
My Heath Tools was developed by Kirklees Council’s Public Health Directorate, working with the Greater Huddersfield and North Kirklees Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). It has been built by Kirklees Council-owned technology developer, Looking Local. People living with long term conditons and health care professionals have also contributed to its development.
The system was independently evaluated using a 12 month longitudinal study with the following results:
- Participants in the My Health Tools user group at 12 months showed significantly greater improvements in:
- Self-efficacy
- Resilience
- Mental Wellbeing
- The most useful aspects were:
- Access to self-management resources
- Reflecting on health
- Goal setting and monitoring
- Prompting change
- The platform was also useful supporting change by making suggestions, prompting new habits and dealing with social isolation
- There were no changes in NHS service use
- MHT improved outcomes even without regular use, how often it was used didn’t affect these
These reslts were used to guide further development with the platform which now hosts information on 7 conditions: Pain, breathing problems, anxiety, depression, diabetes, MSK and CVD with dementia and cancer being added in 2019.
