We've got exciting news about our Cystic Fibrosis 'Back in the Driving Seat' Appeal, which we want to share with all of you. 

Royal Brompton's Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Centre has been very busy over the last six months. Helen Parrott, Associate Director of Rehabilitation & Therapies brings you our latest update:

"We thought it was time to give you an update on the progress of Royal Brompton's CF Digital project. It has been a busy six months and we have been making progress in three main areas:

The platform

Following a competitive tender process towards the end of 2018, we have now formally partnered with a very exciting digital health company called Medopad. They are going to build the technology that will allow people with cystic fibrosis to take their own health measures, such as their lung function, using their smartphone and then share that data with the CF clinical team. They are already building similar technology for other diseases and we are very excited to be working with them. April will see us finalising our contract together and the next steps will be to get the app in the hands of patients and find out what they think!

The virtual clinic

We have been piloting the use of smartphone-enabled spirometers in a small number of people with CF for some time. It allows us to do video consultations (pictured right) in some instances rather than bringing patients to the clinic setting as the lung function test can be performed from the comfort of the patients’ home and shared with the clinical team ahead of the consultation.

Since the start of this pilot, we’ve had 79 hours' worth of video conversations and 1080 lung function tests shared! We’ve had great feedback from patients about the technology and we have been working hard to expand this service from one to two clinics per week. Soon, people with CF will be able to monitor not only their lung function but their weight, mood and activity levels too!

Branding

We want to give the platform and the new virtual service its own name and friendly branding so we have just commissioned a graphic design company to work with us in designing it. We want this to look like any other app on your phone that helps you to live your life.

Watch this space as we should have some exciting updates on this in the very near future."

Thank you to those who have so generously supported or donated to this pioneering appeal. We will continue to support this project in the first half of this year. To find out more or donate, please click here. 

To read the full Back in the Driving Seat Spring 2019 Report, click here.