How do health professionals provide accessible information?

We recently worked on a study that was commissioned by East Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). We wanted to find out how health professionals in Lancashire work with people who have communication and accessibility needs. There are clear health disparities between people with learning disabilities and the general population, leading to concern among professionals about the health information they provide

A Semantic-enabled Framework For Future Internet Of Things Applications

While the challenge of connecting Internet of Things (IoT) devices at the lowest layer has been widely studied, integrating and interoperating huge amounts of sensed data of heterogeneous IoT devices is becoming increasingly important because of the possibility of consuming such data in supporting many potential novel IoT applications. A common approach to processing and consuming IoT data is a centralized paradigm: sensor data is sent over the network to a comparatively powerful central server or a cloud service, where all processing takes place. However, this approach has some limitations as it requires devices to interact directly with a cloud which is not cost effective. First, it has high demands on the device's storage and computational capabilities. Second, as devices grow rapidly in a deployment area, sending all the data to a centralized cloud server requires high network bandwidth. Moreover, this often creates data privacy concerns as all raw data will be sent to a centralized place. To address the above limitations for building future Internet of Things applications, we present an early design of a novel framework that combines Internet of Things, Semantic Web, and Big Data concepts. We not only present the core components to build an IoT system, but also list existing alternatives with their merits. This framework aims to incorporate open standards to address the potential challenges in building future IoT applications. Therefore, our discussion revolves around open standards to build the framework, rather than proprietary standards

Get ready for your Annual Health Check

Easy Read Poster to support People with Learning Disability for their health checks during COVID measure

Appointment Prioritisation for Health Checks in People with Learning Disability

Due to measures in place in relation to managing COVID-19 pandemic, the Learning Disability health checks in their old form are a problem to implement and are not being done. Working with colleagues through the Royal College of General Practitioners Special Interest Groups and clinicians across the UK, guidelines on how to prioritise health checks were developed and adopted by Leeds CCG and NHS Englan

Impact of the English Directly Enhanced Service (DES) for Learning Disability

Final Report to the Department of Healt

Report on the National Audit of Learning Disabilities Feasibility Study (NALD-FS)

Background Concerns have repeatedly been expressed about the quality of healthcare that people with learning disabilities receive in the NHS. Clinical audit can be an effective method for improving the quality of healthcare especially when existing standards are poor. This feasibility study for a national audit of learning disabilities examined the acceptability of data collection methods and the role that audit data could play in raising the standard of care provided. The audit team used these results to recommend how a future national audit should be conducted, including recommendations for standards, recruiting services, data collection methods, and helping services use audit data to improve the quality of care they provide. Findings Results of the study confirm that the quality of care for people with learning disabilities falls below recommended standards. Variation in practice across study sites suggests that it is possible to improve the quality of care people receive. Primary care standards in a national audit should address whether physical and mental health monitoring is adequate for people with learning disabilities. Based on stakeholder feedback, the audit should also collect information about interventions associated with these standards. Audit data should be reported to individual practices as well as at a commissioning level, to maximise engagement with quality improvement. A national audit of secondary care should include acute and mental health providers, as well as specialist learning disability services. Private providers commissioned for NHS patients should also be included within the audit’s remit. Standards in secondary care should be centred on physical and mental health monitoring, staff training, reasonable adjustments and delivery of person-centred care. There should be a core set of standards applying to all types of service, and a subset developed to audit priority issues specific to each service. Experience measures for staff, carers, and patients are necessar

Health promotion and screening for people with an intellectual disability

People with intellectual disability have significantly worse health than those without, and have a higher level of complex health needs. The life expectancy for men and women is 13 and 20 years shorter, respectively, than the general population. The increasing role of general practice in delivering and coordinating care across health and social care settings requires expert generalist skills to implement an integrated approach to care. This article explores how general practice can improve the health of people with intellectual disability, by making reasonable adjustments within health promotion, disease prevention, screening and detection

Psychotropics use: GP Perspective

To build understanding of the role of supporters and other health professionals relating to prescribing and de-prescribing psychotropic medications