Case study | Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust
Overview
A pioneering Life Stories platform which stimulates memories through Life Review/Life Stories reminiscence activities
VerseOne and Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust (HACW) launch pioneering digital Life Stories platform.
HACW and VerseOne sought to develop a pioneering Life Stories platform which would stimulate memories through Life Review/Life Stories reminiscence activities. Empowering users to build their own ‘digital memory book’, capturing and sharing photos, music, memories and more.
People living with memory loss may experience problems with communication and struggle to tell health professionals what matters most to them. HACW and VerseOne aimed to deliver a life story aid which would act as a memory prompt, communicate key needs, enhance inter-generational understanding and remain easily accessible and sharable on any digital device.
The Challenge
HACW required a pioneering and media-rich platform which would help health professionals understand and communicate with those living with dementia and other cognitive difficulties and deliver more general applicability.
Writing and sharing our life stories can be therapeutic and enhance wellbeing. Different forms of life stories/life review work have been around for some time and HACW challenged VerseOne to extend the traditional model by pioneering a new digital version with all the additional functionality that comes with that. This new Life Stories platform would act as a framework to capture the major moments in people’s lives within a rich, interactive, ‘digital book’ which needed to be:
Easily accessible: To provide a way of collecting thoughts, images, videos, memories and music in one place which could be securely shared with friends, family and carers. In particular, the platform would allow people with dementia and their families to underline who they are, convey important information, and say ‘This is me’ from any location.
Clinically applicable: Life Stories would provide healthcare professionals with a deeper understanding of a person's needs and identity across integrated care systems, allowing them to communicate with and care for individuals in the best-possible way.
Shareable: To help users securely export and share their memory books with family members, friends, carers and clinicians to develop closer bonds, challenge assumptions and enhance relationships.
Personal: To stimulate memories and support people to capture what’s important to them and live in the here and now by focusing on a new and exciting projects.
The solution
Dedicated online workshops were held with service users, health and care staff, family members and senior managers to ensure HACW and VerseOne gained a deep understanding of the key issues stakeholders expected Life Stories to address.
A collaborative design process followed, with VerseOne working hand-in-hand with HACW professionals, led by Dr Natasha Lord, Lead Older Adults Mental Health Clinical Psychologist, to ensure the digital platform provided a personalised and safe space in which users could create and design their own life story, framing the memories and moments which matter most to them.
Recollections, images, key facts, video, music and more can be uploaded to deliver a personalised, powerful and secure digital book which can be shared and accessed anywhere on any device, supporting the delivery of true integrated care.
Key features also include a secure registration process, expert-led templated chapters, curated and copyright-free Life Story resource packs, and the capability to upload content (photographs, audio, video) from personal devices or online sources, including social media.
Life Stories can be integrated with other health and care digital systems, and exported and shared with any nominated contact via PDF, slideshow video or printed book format, too.
The therapeutic application is already being put to work within clinical settings across Herefordshire and Worcestershire to stimulate memories in service users with varying degrees of dementia, but has also been designed with the general public in mind, and is now live and free to residents of both counties.
