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We develop interventions to improve health and health care. We focus on user needs to ensure our interventions will be useful and can be used in the NHS and other healthcare systems.
Intervention development is the initial stage of design before an intervention reaches clinical trial. Investing time and resources in this stage of research increases the chance that interventions will be effective, cost-effective, and easily implemented into routine care.
Our intervention development group is co-led by Elizabeth Murray, Fiona Stevenson and Kate Walters. We work across the PCPH research teams to inform research design.
We use co-design, participatory design and user-centred design to plan our research. We draw on engineering and computer science to develop and improve our interventions. Our research combines patient engagement with knowledge gained from academic, empirical and theoretical literature to design interventions that are effective and meaningful to patients.
To determine content, delivery and presentation we use iterative cycles of user discovery and user testing. The result of these studies is usable, acceptable and ethically informed evidence-based interventions that meet user requirements.
We collaborate with other sectors including charities and software companies. We are also committed to patient and public involvement.
Research
We have used intervention development in Project Swallow – developing a smart phone app to support oesophageal cancer patients and computer software to support cancer nurses.
Caption: Two screen shots from the Living with smart phone app to support oesophageal cancer patients in the community.