Close
Supervisors: Professor Elizabeth Murray, Dr Fiona Stevenson, Dr Julia Bailey, Dr Fiona Hamilton
The eHealth Unit is internationally recognised, with a strong multi-disciplinary focus and expertise across a wide range of research methods. It focuses on the use of digital technologies to improve health and health care. Areas of interest include developing and evaluating digital interventions to promote self management for patients with long term conditions (e.g. diabetes, heart disease) and for health promotion / behaviour change (e.g. alcohol, sexual health). The unit also undertakes research on implementation of digital technologies in the NHS and the impact of eHealth on health care professional - patient interactions.
Project: Apps and websites for sexual health promotion
Supervisor: Dr Julia Bailey
Students are welcome to propose any projects which involve digital media for sexual health
promotion. Projects can cover intervention design, qualitative and quantitative evaluation, digital
health implementation, and/or online research methodologies.
Project: Digital media for sex and relationships education in schools
Supervisor: Dr Julia Bailey
School sex and relationships education (SRE) can be a challenge to teach. Teachers and students
can find it embarrassing, and students may not be willing to discuss some topics in classroom
lessons. E-Health interventions such as tailored websites or mobile phone interventions can offer
private, convenient access to SRE. This project is to help to develop digital resources for school
children, teachers and parents, and to evaluate their feasibility and acceptability using qualitative
interviews with children, parents and teachers.
Project: Digital tools for GP patients
Supervisor: Dr Julia Bailey
There are a huge range of digital tools and e-resources for health promotion and management of
illness, for example interactive websites, online decision-aids, behaviour change interventions,
electronic reminders and prompts. This project is to explore the barriers and facilitators to
clinicians recommending e-health resources to patients. The project involves a literature review
and evidence synthesis and qualitative interviews with stakeholders (patients, clinicians,
commissioners). The output will be guidance for clinicians on good practice in recommending ehealth
resources to patients.
Project: Use of the internet in GP consultations
Supervisor: Dr Fiona Stevenson
One of our ongoing projects is to consider how the internet is used in consultations by both GPs
and patients and whether or not internet resources are raised by either patients or GPs as a source
of information. The research design is a brief questionnaire prior to consultations, videotaping of
consultations and interviews with GPs and patients after consultations. Students would have access
to these data and have the opportunity to develop a project related to their own interests in
relation to communication about, and use of, digital resources.
Project: Doctor-patient communication on 'sensitive' topics
Supervisor: Dr Julia Bailey
Clinicians strive to be 'non-judgemental', but it is not clear what this actually means in practice. This
project is a qualitative discourse analysis of clinician-patient communication on topics such as
sexual risk, smoking or alcohol, to explore how clinicians balance being non-judgemental with
giving advice about lifestyle factors. It will involve analysis of video recorded consultations and
interviews with clinicians and patients.
"
Contacts: elizabeth.murray@ucl.ac.uk julia.bailey@ucl.ac.uk f.stevenson@ucl.ac.uk f.hamilton@ucl.ac.uk
