In October of 2020 Turku University Hospital's (Tyks) Psychiatric Neuromodulation Unit started using the BuddyCare Platform for digital patient engagement, automated patient support and data collection. Patients receive all care-related information, instructions, reminders and maintenance treatment through the BuddyCare mobile application. While patients are engaged digitally; the care personnel receives patients' pre-questionnaires and other forms such as BDI and BAI questionnaires to their dashboard and can monitor their progress remotely.
Four different psychiatric care pathways have been created for the psychiatric neuromodulation unit.
Previously, Turku University Hospital's neuromodulation unit has guided patients by phone calls, sending letters or text messages. With the help of the BuddyCare Platform's, the hospital aims to automate and digitize its communication and increase digital patient engagement. The Platform automatically collects pre-assessment forms and questionnaires and provides the data to the care personnel without the personnel having to make phone calls, process paper mailings, or send text messages. Automated care pathways and streamlined processes are expected to free up care personnel's time for other tasks.
Antti Apostol who works as a Project Manager, Digitalisation at Turku University Hospital, Psychiatry commented on the project deployment,
"Buddy Healthcare's solution fits well with our psychiatry unit's plans to utilize digital patient guidance and education services as a part of the care process. One of the critical factors in ensuring how well the digital service will fit into different units' daily work is to provide the teams the freedom to use creativity when producing digital content. In that way, the care team also feels that digital services support their daily work in the best possible way.
Antti Lehti, the Neuromodulation Unit's Head Nurse, has done a fantastic job with his team in content production for the first care pathways. His team's work is an excellent example of scaling digital services to other care units.
In the administration of psychiatry, we look forward to receiving feedback from both patients and care teams, because in addition to the various ongoing system integrations, our development work also requires end-users active and careful listening."
Markus Lind, Chief Sales Officer of Buddy Healthcare, stated that,
"Previously, our Platform has mainly been used to support patients and clinics in digital patient engagement and care coordination automation before and after procedures. Now, some of these neuromodulation care pathway patients can be in maintenance treatment or therapy for up to one year. This is also something new for us as a company, to be working with care pathways of that length of time.”
We at Buddy Healthcare are very excited about our collaboration with Turku University Hospital's neuromodulation unit.