Inclusive communication tool aims to reduce health inequalities and remove communication barriers between healthcare staff and patients
As a senior anaesthetic registrar at Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, naturally, I have a passion for ensuring patients are as comfortable as possible. During my maternity leave in the midst of a pandemic, I read an article that first sparked the realisation that everyday communication is taken for granted. The article was focused around a critically ill patient who was terrified because they could not understand what their clinician was saying through their PPE.
Reading further into the problem, I found that up to 50% of people have additional communication needs - I was desperate to help. In the 72 hours since I had read that first article, my husband Tim and I conceptualised and launched CardMedic.
CardMedic - a desktop and mobile app that provides digital flashcards to guide patients with additional communication needs through clinical interactions, to deliver inclusive communication for all.
Additional communication needs can be due to a number of reasons, including deafness, blindness, or language barriers. Communication barriers have serious implications in healthcare settings and contribute to health inequalities. CardMedic was launched to help reduce these health inequalities by enabling patients to understand information by making it accessible, addressing their specific communication needs, and in turn transforming the relationship that patients have with their clinicians. This supports reduced mortality, improved medication compliance, and a reduction in anxiety and fear felt by patients previously unable to understand healthcare staff.
Improvement in communication has shown to empower patients to make collaborative decisions with healthcare teams around their care.
Fast forward to today, the solution now holds a library of content in multiple languages, including British Sign Language and Braille, that clinicians can use to communicate with their patients. All emergency content is also free to download, with subscriptions available for larger libraries. Since its launch, the app has had over 22,000 downloads across the UK and internationally, which makes us extremely proud!
“CardMedic has been a huge help for my Critical Care Nurses and Doctors who have been trying to communicate with our overseas patients, especially out of hours.”
Rose, Matron, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
A recent service evaluation at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, in collaboration with the Social Science team at University of Sussex led by Dr Mary Darking, revealed a 28% increase in patient confidence when understanding healthcare staff when they were using CardMedic, from 67% to 95%.
My journey on the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur programme
I joined the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme in 2020 and have benefitted from the support from influential people in the health and technology community.
The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme has given the whole CardMedic team unparalleled insight and exposure into the NHS infrastructure and procurement frameworks, which often remain elusive for new companies trying to break into the NHS. On a skills level, I have progressed to learn how to write a business plan, a financial model, and learned key skills on how to pitch to investors.
My key piece of advice to all aspiring innovators is to really understand the problem you are wanting and needing to solve. Working within the NHS provides a unique advantage as you have lived experiences of the challenges the services face. It is important your creation answers a specific question or solves a real problem, only then can you really create something that is going to make a difference. The process of bringing an innovation like CardMedic to life is hard, but the programme allows you to go on this journey with other like-minded people and you can support each other along the way. The networking element of the programme has supported CardMedic to explore partnerships, build relationships, and nurture them. The mentorship provided by the programme also provides opportunity to meet other fantastic people in the programme, which is always inspiring!
The programme has been invaluable in helping CardMedic become what it is today. We have been able to build an amazing network, create opportunities through strategic partnerships, build confidence with presenting, and had the opportunity to get in front of some really amazing people. There’s nothing quite like the scale of opportunity of this programme, and I’m forever grateful for the opportunities it has created.
What's next for CardMedic
Moving forward, as a company we plan to grow our content library, with a priority in building out the primary care content as this is the front door to the health system for many people. We are also aiming to build the number of translations to 30+ languages and ensure that everything is human translated so the content is of the highest quality, and accuracy, and is culturally appropriate.
Outside of new content, we are looking to scale by integrating with EPRs, and explore relationships with Cerner and Allscripts. We are also working with Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust on a testbed project as part of the CW+ Innovation Programme, an opportunity that was provided as part of our recent Pitchfest win at Digital Health Rewired.
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