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Healthcare innovation

Find out how a collaboration with our School of Medicine led to an innovation solution for patients suffering from mild to moderate Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Online self-help intervention

HLC KTP

Healthcare Learning (Smile:on) Ltd develops, markets and sells training programmes and solutions to healthcare professionals, working in alliance with existing healthcare learning institutions, leading academics and practitioners to produce the most current learning in the most accessible way.  The company wanted to diversify its existing portfolio of online healthcare initiatives by moving into the wider healthcare market, specifically targeting general medical areas and web-based self-help interventions.

Professor Jonathan Bisson, School of Medicine, is an expert in the field of traumatic stress and with colleagues has developed a guided self-help tool to treat patients suffering from mild to moderate Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

A KTP was formed, which would combine the company’s expertise in the production of high quality web-based interactive learning programmes with the academic team’s experience of developing and evaluating psychological interventions for PTSD, to enable the guided self-help tool to be packaged and further developed as an online self-help solution, which would be an innovative step in healthcare provision.

New market opportunities

The project has enabled the company to enter the medical market and within this, the market of web-based self-help interventions. Managed by KTP Associate, Dr Catrin Lewis, who did her PhD with Professor Bisson, and was part of the team which developed the tool, the partnership has made great strides in the development of a marketable trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy programme which is currently undergoing a randomised controlled clinical trial.

The company has also benefitted from having a subject matter expert on site to work alongside its technical experts and they have learnt how to produce a clinically effective intervention which meets the requirements set out by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. This has helped them to gain a share in what is an increasing market for on-line self-help.

The academic team has gained exposure to different ways of thinking, for example, the importance of content presentation in interventions. It is also anticipated that the project will result in publishable papers in high impact journals.