​How many Brits worked from home before the COVID-19 outbreak?

According to the Office for National Statistics, just 5% of the UK’s active 32.6 million workers (1.63 million) considered their home as their main place of work in 2019. The figure grew to 4 million (12.26%) when factoring in those who work in part from home. In April 2020, as businesses and workers adjusted to the realities of COVID-19, the ONS found that 15.19 million people were working from home in some capacity. That’s 46.6% of all people in employment. 
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This is a huge increase and a new landscape for everyone, with employers and workers persevering to adapt and figure out the best practices going forward. With many businesses reluctant to reopen while the pandemic continues, and one third of young British workers saying they expect to work from home after the pandemic, the trend is likely to continue into the future. So, it seems like we are not going to be returning to our offices any time soon.  

How can home workers look after their physical health while working from home, then? Similarly, how can businesses make sure they do everything they can while their staff work from home? 

If you’re experiencing discomfort, don’t ignore the symptoms

Since the beginning of the pandemic, millions of workers experienced an unprecedented shift in their day-to-day routines without full consideration of what that means. Many have found themselves working in improvised, often unhealthy setups – stooped over kitchen tables, sat on sofas with their laptop or even perched on the edges of beds. 

While the WFH trend continues, it might not occur to people that there is a relationship between working conditions, poor posture and pain. Whether it's lower back, neck or muscle pain, these initial symptoms can be subtle and slow to come on. They can also seriously impact your health down the line if they aren't recognised early enough. 

That’s why it’s very important for both home-workers and employers to make sure that care is taken to create an adequate working environment. If you’re the one working from home, it’s vital to listen to your body and treat any aches and their causes as soon as you become aware of them. You should also tell your employer about any health and safety risks and home working arrangements that need to change. 

Occupational health and home-working guidelines

From an employer perspective, there are occupational health considerations and workplace risks your WFH policy might not yet cover, including physical health risks and inadequate insurance. Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, employers are expected to take reasonable care for employee safety when working at home. 

What does this mean, exactly? While it might not be possible to carry out a full health and safety assessment at your employees’ homes just now, you need to make sure that each member of staff feels the work they're being asked to do can be done safely. The right equipment to work safely is a must, too. 

Employers should be asking employees to undertake a self-assessment checklist before setting them up for remote work. For example, asking your employee to check they’ve got an appropriate chair and whether their desk is at the right height. If you’re self-employed and working from home, this list is just as relevant to you. 

Working from home checklist

Here are some examples of self-assessment questions for employees:

• Is there enough space to work comfortably?
• Does the employee know how to set up the workstation and chair for safe use?
• Are the employee’s eyes level with the top of the screen? 
• Is the keyboard tilt-able and is there space in front of it to rest hands when not typing?
• Is the chair adjustable and has it been adjusted to suit the employee’s needs? 
• Does the employee need a footrest? 
• Are the feet flat on the floor when the chair is adjusted to the right height for typing?
• Is there enough leg-room for movement?
• Is the desk big enough to work?
• When using the computer, does the employee get aches, pains, tingling or pins and needles in the hands, arms, shoulders, neck or back?
• Do the symptoms persist after the employee has stopped working on the computer?

Taking steps to protect mental health

In addition to the physical challenges of working from home, employers should be in regular contact with staff, making sure they do not feel isolated. Consider how you can support your employees to combat the potential psychological challenges of COVID-19. This means investing the time to connect with your employees and offer reassurance. 

In these unprecedented times, there is some good news: together, we can help each to adapt, and to create healthy and comfortable work environments for the future.

What to do next...

Your free physiotherapy assessment is waiting. Working from home or in a different way can lead to physical pain or discomfort. PhysioWizard® Lite is a fast and easy online assessment to help you alleviate your symptoms. 

Trusted by National Healthcare providers, for a limited time we are offering PhysioWizard® Lite free to the public and employers. By supporting our businesses, community, and healthcare professionals, we hope to reduce pressure on frontline staff and services, and empower people to help themselves.

Muscle and joint related problems pose as one of the most difficult and costly healthcare problems to diagnose in the UK. With high volumes of patients and hard to diagnose symptoms, the route to musculoskeletal diagnosis can be difficult. This doubt and confusion over symptoms, can lead to inaccurate self-diagnosis, inadequate advice and a prolonged treatment path exploring multiple avenues of treatments. This uncertainty not only increases the time in which it takes to resolve an MSK problem, but also rapidly increases the cost of treatment.
 
PhysioWizard is a digital alternative that can not only improve patient management and routes to treatment but increases the efficiency of the service, whilst cutting the cost.

Benefits for Cost Cutting 
With more than 17.8 million people living with an MSK condition in the UK right now it’s no wonder the healthcare industry is struggling to provide the most cost effective and efficient service to all. There is nothing worse than living in severe and prolonged pain, but what makes it even worse is the crippling costs that go hand in hand with diagnosis.
 
That’s where our digital triage solution can step in. Discover some of the benefits PhysioWizard’s digital triage solution can help to cut the costs, for all MSK sufferers.
 
Reduce Time
PhysioWizard’s digital triage solution works to help reduce the triage process time from 45 minutes to as little as 7 minutes.
 
We all know what a difference that 30 mins can make when you are suffering extreme pain. Physio Wizard makes the stage of triage both simpler and more efficient. By allowing patients the ability to self asses their own condition through a range of in depth and calculated discovery question.
 
Directing patients straight to the correct course of treatment. Reducing the need for multiple assessments before landing on the most appropriate pathway of care. This process ensures that your patients are empowered to access the right care and receive treatment at the right time without any delays.
 
Digital triage also reduces the time needed for an initial face to face assessment, allowing the clinicians more time to implement treatment plans. Whilst also cutting the amount of unnecessary and painful time, patients need to wait for a resolve in treatment. For early MSK sufferers, quick response to treatment is crucial to help prevent acute musculoskeletal problems from becoming chronic.
 
Improved Choice 
PhysioWizard works by accumulating data regarding patients’ symptoms and needs, then translating into a management plan with immediate effect. PhysioWizard then provides patients with a direct route to treatment, most suitable to their needs.
 
In some cases, this better understanding of diagnosis allows for the extended capability of offering self-management and exercises where appropriate. This not only saves time for many patients struggling to visit clinics but also cuts the costs of treatment dramatically.
 
The Correct Path of Treatment 
Using digital triage at the early stage of an MSK problem can prevent the cost of unnecessary discovery examinations and tests. The cost of medical treatment can quickly add up, especially if patients see the wrong healthcare professional.
 
Receiving the incorrect path of treatment can lead to expensive investigation such as MRI scans or X-rays or. The key to keeping costs low during diagnosis is matching patients to the correct, recommended treatment directly. Especially for MSK suffering patients, who’ initial stage of diagnosis relies on patient history and or a physical examination, as opposed to costly scans and x-rays. Physio Wizard provides a platform for accurate and consistent treatment referral to the recommended healthcare professional.

We hope you found this breakdown of cost saving benefits useful and if you would like to learn more about digital triage, get in touch ​here.
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For many people, private healthcare has become the preferred choice. This is mainly due to the increased demands for faster and more accessible treatment. As this demand rises, ultimately so does the potential for longer waiting times.

ooking particularly at patients suffering from joint and muscle related problems, we breakdown the benefits digital triage and management of care provides the private healthcare system. And how this software can improve upon the service, private healthcare companies provide their patients. 

In this article, we explain how digital triage software can improve the service private healthcare companies provide their patients. 

Private Healthcare
People use private healthcare because of the quicker diagnosis and faster treatment. However, as the demand for more readily accessible treatment increases, so does the workload of the patient care team. With a growing number of patient records to manage and care management tasks to organise, the cracks have begun to show in the quality of service provided. Particularly for those suffering from musculoskeletal related problems. 

Muscle and joint problems are one of the biggest management challenges for private healthcare companies. With high volumes of patients and hard to diagnose symptoms, the route to diagnosis can be difficult. This doubt and confusion over symptoms, can lead to inaccurate self-diagnosis, inadequate advice and a prolonged treatment path through exploring multiple avenues of treatments before reaching the right course of action. This uncertainty can lead to treatment bottlenecks, increasing waiting times and treatment cost. And as reduce the quality of service Private Healthcare companies provide their customers and patients.

Delays can be harmful to the patient’s wellbeing whilst also adversely affecting the quality of patient care. This leaves private healthcare providers questioning:

‘How can we tackle a more streamlined course of treatment for muscle and joint related patients and improve upon the service we provide?’

Going Digital
In a climate of increasing customers’ expectations and pressure on costs it’s essential for private healthcare companies to innovate in order to stay ahead of the competition. This is where digital triage steps in. Enhancing clinician triage with a digital solution such, will not only improve customer experience and profitability, but also make the service easier and more efficient to deliver.

PhysioWizard is a digital alternative that can not only improve patient management and routes to treatment that private healthcare can provide but also the efficiency of the service.

1. Improve Choice
Digitalisation provides patients with an online solution which is accessible 24-hours a day; anytime, anywhere. 

This software-as-a-service saves clinicians time, allowing them to focus on the ongoing care of their patients, while improving patient’s choice by automating the triage stage of treatment. 

PhysioWizard works by accumulating data regarding patients’ symptoms and needs, to then translate into a management plan with immediate effect. PhysioWizard provides patients with a more direct route to treatment that is most suitable to their needs. It reduces the need for multiple assessments to get onto the most appropriate pathway of care and reduces the time needed for an initial face to face assessment, allowing the clinicians more time to implement treatment plans. PhysioWizard also has the extended capability of offering self-management and exercises where appropriate, saving time for many patients struggling to visit clinics, saving treatment costs and freeing up clinical time for others with more appropriate needs. 

2. Streamline Treatment
This streamlined integration makes it easier to unite doctors, nurses, patients and other hospital staff with all the key information. This easily accessible information provides all parties involved with a clear up-to-date version of the patient’s condition, treatment and diagnosis. Thus, a more efficient healthcare system will emerge.

3. Cut the Cost
The cost of medical treatment (and any other costs associated with a patient’s wellbeing i.e. absence from work) can add up, especially if patients see the wrong healthcare professional. Receiving the incorrect path of treatment can lead to un-necessary and expensive investigations such as radiology-type MRI scans and/or X-Rays. 

The key to keeping costs low is matching patients to the recommended treatment directly. PhysioWizard provides a platform for accurate and consistent treatment referral to the recommended healthcare professional.

Highlights - Benefits of Digital Triage
• Improve customer experience
• Reduce the bottleneck of clinician led triage
• Free up clinician time to focus on treatment
• Provide direct access to triage; 24 hours a day
• Reduce time to triage from 45 to only 15 mins
• Provides early management and advice for musculoskeletal problems
• A complete pathway of care for those suitable to self-manage
• Every patient has a clear route of care with an accessible point of contact

If you’ve found this article interesting and have any questions get in touch. Or if you wold like to know more about how PhysioWizard and our digital triage solution could improve your healthcare service - find out more here.

The NHS is currently understaffed, and overstretched as a result. With care and services already dangerously strained in places, and the UK’s ageing population threatening to increase the workload exponentially, something will need to change if the service is to continue to function. Even increasing the funding received by the NHS is not enough to solve the issue, as an increase in budget doesn’t necessarily equate to solving the staffing crisis.
 
A BBC article from February of this year estimated that the NHS in England alone is understaffed by roughly 100,000 people, or, put another way, one in 12 positions in the service are currently vacant, including 10,000 doctor and 35,000 nursing positions. This means that existing staff are under ever-increasing pressure to meet constantly growing demands, which makes their time precious.
 
Services will need to become more efficient, and digital healthcare is already proving valuable in freeing up man-hours, leaving clinicians more time to focus on their patients. Even something as simple as sharing databases, or creating platforms to do so can make a huge difference. As it stands, for huge swathes of the country there is no facility in place for sharing patient information between GPs’ surgeries, hospitals, and ambulance services. So if a hospital-based clinician needs to clarify any details about a patient, or their treatment history, for example, most will need to phone, fax, or write to the patient’s GP to request that information. This will often necessitate scheduling a second consultation while the information is exchanged, something that is time-consuming for all parties involved, particularly as that appointment will also generate additional admin.
 
The Great North Care Record (GNCR), a government funded digital healthcare project, has already transformed the way patients’ data is shared between healthcare providers in the North of England. The GNCR means that surgeries, hospitals, and ambulance services now have shared access to patient records, and are able to access them instantly. This doesn’t only increase efficiency and save time – it can also save lives. Out-of-hours services, especially emergency departments, benefit massively from having access to detailed clinical records, allowing for an informed approach to care. While this is an important step in the right direction, it is far from universal. The GNCR is limited to the North East and North Cumbria, covering only around 3 million of the UK’s 65 million people.
 
But managing and sharing data is only half the battle – how it is collected is another area where there’s considerable room for improvement. Between ensuring patients are directed to the right department or specialist, and then assessing for treatment, triaging currently accounts for a significant amount of clinicians’ time.
 
Digital healthcare systems such as PhysioWizard® are in the process of revolutionising the way triage is performed, and saving clinicians much-needed time in the process. Patients complete an online questionnaire which can be completed in under ten minutes, inputting information on their symptoms, with their answers then being algorithmically analysed so they can be directed to the appropriate department, and a report sent to the relevant clinician. By the time they first meet with their patient, the clinician is familiar with key elements of their medical history. Handing over these routine tasks to AI can appreciably reduce a clinician’s workload, leaving them with more time to focus on the patients themselves, and their treatment. It also helps to add an extra level of consistency in data gathering, making for more thorough patient records.
 
If you are a healthcare professional and would like to hear more about how PhysioWizard® can help to improve patient care and services while lightening your workload, then why not request a demo?

Everyone is in agreement that it is extremely costly for healthcare organisations such as hospitals, health insurance and occupational health companies, or those managing personal injury claims to assess patients with muscle and joint (musculoskeletal-MSK) problems. The on-paper argument for self-assessment tools in this area is 100% convincing, but the reality is that uptake is mixed. Not everyone is in agreement about how MSK assessment costs can be managed better while maintaining the required high standards of patient care.

It is clear for all to see that providing tools which patients complete that automate healthcare assessment will improve consistency, convenience and reduce the costs involved in delivering services, but introducing such tools isn’t always straightforward. In reality both clinicians and patients can often put up barriers when faced with such solutions.

At PhysioWizard® we believe that clinicians and patients who resist well planned, well developed and cleverly delivered tools are missing a trick. After all, Dr Google is the default healthcare resource for many people suffering from health issues today, so most patients are already convinced about the value of online.

Online health information seeking activities

In an American study (2013), 72% of internet users say they had looked online for health information of one kind or another within the past year. 39% of online health information seekers say they looked for information related to their own situation. Another 39% say they looked for information related to someone else’s health or medical situation. An additional 15% of these internet users say they were looking both on their own and someone else’s behalf.

When it comes to gender differences, it is reported that women are more likely than men to go online to figure out a possible diagnosis. Other groups that have a high likelihood of doing so include younger people, white adults, those who live in households earning $75,000 or more, and those with a college degree or advanced degrees. This means that patients are seeking out online health guidance already, so why are they reluctant to use online self-assessment tools that are provided by a known and trusted source?

Reasons for not using tools usually come about because tools are clunky or appear to speak a different language to the patient (medical or technical speak which the patient finds frustrating and confusing). The other reason is how the tool is presented to the patient. At PhysioWizard®, our online tool has been built to pass the 11-year-old reader and usage test, which means that only the most technophobic patient is likely to struggle with its interface. What’s more we’ve included the option to incorporate a face-to-face element, which we believe will transform patient uptake outcomes.

When it comes to clinicians, we quite rightly wonder how a machine can do any job as well as we can. And the answer is that no machine should aim to replace any clinician, ever. The purpose of the likes of PhysioWizard® is to remove the repetitive, time consuming, more mundane elements of the clinician’s job. Its use means that the patient can get married up with the right treatment quickly and efficiently and the clinician wins back the time to get on with doing what they do best. Add to this the fact that such tools allow for the collation of data which is at the cornerstone of planning for the future and you start to see why it’s in all our interests to work together to assist parents in the use of online self-assessment tools.

If you’re an Occupational Health professional, Private Health Care provider or are in the Public Health Sector and would like to find out more about how PhysioWizard® could make life easier for you and better for your patients, why not request a demo?

The use of digital tools in healthcare is growing, but there’s a whole lot more to be done.  At this moment in time, the majority of digital tools are designed for clinical staff to assess patients.  Even this is a significant step forward and helps reduce the amount of time that talented professionals spend doing things that can be done on at least a semi-automated basis.  But to say that what we’re seeing today is just the toe in the water of the real potential that can be offered by digital tools is an understatement.

At PhysioWizard®, we believe that the greatest outcome improvements and cost savings can be achieved by involving the patient in their health.  We believe that when effective, easy to navigate, simple to understand tools that start with some face-to-face involvement and move on to online become the norm that the real opportunities will start to be recognised.  Giving patients a clever combination of online and off is what we believe will get the best results all round.  Involving sufferers in their own care is, in our view, without a doubt the way to a better future.

It is our view that developing tools which patients can interact with will save significant clinical time and money at the same time as improving outcomes. This approach enhances compliance, encourages the patient to self-manage and reduces their reliance on medical services.  It is also a great foundation on which to start gathering the all-important data that will shape our future.

Patients today expect healthcare to be personalised to themselves and their individual circumstances, but many digital tools fall down because they’re too generalised and confusing to navigate.  According to this study published in JMIR they’re also criticised for being frustratingly difficult to use, containing content that’s irrelevant and incomprehensible as well as lacking face-to-face involvement.
It is our view that the only way that digital health tools can add value both to the patient and to the healthcare profession at large is if they are designed in such a way to appeal to the users’ needs and they keep the user engaged to the point that they support the patient back to wellness. 

At PhysioWizard® we truly believe that artificial intelligence and technology has the capacity to revolutionise how healthcare professionals deliver solutions to patients and sufferers.  To revolutionise how patients get well again.  But like any solution that’s delivered to any user the key is putting the unique needs, pains and problems of the user at the core of everything we do.  We know that succeeding in developing any successful digital wellness tool starts with the user. 

We also know that advice needs to be user specific to reduce drop-out rate and give the tool its best chances of reaching a successful conclusion.  It is also clear to us that patient tools need to be extremely simple so that irrespective of literacy or language a patient can interact (albeit with clinical support from time to time) and of course these tools need to be recognised as enhancing the service provided by the human side of the health service, not taking it over.

If you’re an Occupational Health professional, Private Health Care provider or are in the Public Health Sector and would like to find out more about how PhysioWizard® could make life easier for you and your patients, why not request a demo.

The world is going digital.  Digital is touching every aspect of our lives and is truly the way forward.  We all know it.  According to this report on CNBC, venture investors poured $4.2 billion into health-technology startups in 2016 alone.  And today, even the least techy patient is accepting that they can book appointments online and get reminders from GPs and hospitals by text.  Whether it’s electronic booking or access to medical records, healthcare is finally embracing digital technology.

In the CNBC report, Mary Meeker outlines her predictions for the advancement of tech healthcare to be primarily in the areas of data gathering, patient information, data storage, clinical trials and even diagnosis.  But what does this mean for healthcare professionals and patients?

Clinicians play a huge part in the development of clinical software tools but many find themselves lacking support when it comes to commissioning innovative solutions.  When they voice their (sometimes considered) disruptive ideas, they’re met with an uphill challenge.  They lack backing, often have challenges sharing their vision and ultimately struggle to get buy in at a level that gives them access to the budget they need.  This is probably why people in this situation have a tendency to take the safe option – after all, nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM.

At PhysioWizard® we find this a real shame.  What it means is that clinicians are missing out on the opportunities that combining their well-researched and documented needs with a disruptive startup could create by means of solution.  The great thing about startups is that they have the ability to flex and pivot, they have a nimble footedness that’s impossible for larger companies to achieve, especially when starting with a blank sheet of paper.  And a blank sheet of paper is where most promising digital healthcare solutions start.  Put all of this together, whilst digitised healthcare is still young and is filled with excitement and opportunity, it is difficult for anyone to take on the role of trail blazer.

The software systems used by healthcare providers and hospitals are on the whole very basic, so it’s vital that companies developing innovative products are aware of this.  Developing digital healthcare tools requires both software robustness and clinical reliability. And this is a difficult combination to get right.  Clinicians and software engineers speak very different languages.  And then of course there are users who speak a completely different language again and have different goals.  Tech teams and clinicians aren’t always celebrated for their communication skills and they both have a language of their own.  Perhaps this is why so many users find digital health tools frustratingly difficult to understand? 

And finally there are all the clinical trials to test safety and efficacy that must be completed with on tools which influence patient pathways and treatment. While testing and trialling is an essential part of quality patient care, it can be a frustrating process for developer and clinician. 

There’s no getting away from the fact that blazing a trail in digital healthcare is a minefield made up of a whole range of different players, but we at PhysioWizard® see this minefield as an opportunity rather than a threat.  Our journey to enabling self-assessment triage that rapidly matches patients suffering from muscle and joint problems with the recommended treatments was never going to be easy, but it’s one that’s well worth taking.

If you’re an Occupational Health professional, Private Health Care provider or are in the Public Health Sector and would like to find out more about how PhysioWizard® could make life easier for you and your patients, why not request a demo?

One of the first things that many people do when they’re unwell or suffering pain is turn to Dr Google.  They spend hours researching their problem on the internet and swing from extreme concern to immense relief.  Sometimes they’re on the right track, sometimes they’re not.  In all aspects of our lives we want answers and thanks to the society we live in today, we want them now.  Waiting times, tests and more tests can lead patients to feel down and hopeless. 

The problem is that most of the information that’s to be found online is generalised, and patients who search without guidance could be led up all sorts of false and dark paths. 
Every patient has a very specific set of symptoms and wants specific and personalised support when they use online tools.  Distrust, confusion and uncertainty about the questions they should be asking leave a huge number of people sceptical about using online health tools and disbelieving of how effective they can be.
Quite often, when faced with tools that are able to provide the personalised support that patients need, they arrive at the door of that solution with a pre-conceived idea that the tool will be little better than the advice they’ve already tracked down from Dr Google.  Depending on the tool, this response may be completely justified, but in many instances it is not the case. 

According to this study published in JMIR, the blocks that patients face when asked to adopt an ehealth solution are:

1.  Frustrating technology,
2.  Perceiving the content as irrelevant and incomprehensible,
3.  Choosing other activities and perspectives, and
4.  Lacking face-to-face encounters.

There’s no getting away from the fact that even the noughties are accustomed to having any significant healthcare interventions they need carried out by a human being.  And Generations Y and Z, who are likely to be producing families at this point expect face-to-face consultations and follow ups when it comes to health issues that are significant enough to warrant a GP visit. 

Although the right ehealth solution used in the right way means that patients can get better faster and resources can be freed up, the shift from human to online was never going to be an easy one.  That said, like all change, the transition can be made easier by paying attention to human behaviour and human responses. 

It’s a fact that certain patients are more au fait with using technology than others.  Take  patients who are accustomed to using applications to organise every aspect of their lives.  They are likely to be much more tolerant of a clunky app that they believe has the potential to help them than those people who have never used an app for even a simple, impersonal task before.  What’s more, the more human, personalised and comprehensible app content is, the more likely that even the less techy user is to accept.  And the last part of the ehealth app secret is to create a natural stepping stone to the transition by mixing human contact with technology.

At PhysioWizard® we’re acutely aware of the human blocks to using online health tools, which is why our priorities are to:

• Marry up ehealth with face-to-face consultations
• Guide patients through the software, offering information about the aim
• Provide personalised content to encourage completion of the tool
• Keep the technology to easy navigate and understand (we aim for a mental comprehension of 11 years old).
• And of course there’s always the option for patients who have issues with illiteracy or language to be led through the software tool by a non-clinical administrator.

At PhysioWizard®, we’re not looking to replace human beings, we’re looking to free them of the run-of-the-mill tasks that take up so much of their time so they have more time to do what they’re best at – getting people well faster.

If you’re an Occupational Health professional, Private Health Care provider or are in the Public Health Sector and would like to find out more about how PhysioWizard® could make life easier for you and your patients, why not request a demo?

No matter what symptoms, diagnoses or treatments people face today, more and more of us are turning to Dr Google for information and reassurance.  Maybe we’re looking for some form of comfort, maybe a second opinion, maybe we just want to know more without the need to ask questions out loud?  Either way, it’s a fact of life today that more and more of us are looking to our mobile phones, laptops and desktops when it comes to digging deeper on our health.

At PhysioWizard® we find this really interesting, because what we’re about is using technology in the cleverest way to improve patient outcomes.  That means we’re really interested in finding out more about what people really think of Dr Google.

With this in mind, in order to better understand what people think of Dr Google, we carried out a study and asked a sample of people a range of questions in order to get their view on online health solutions.  We found their responses quite revealing.
Here are just some of the questions we asked:

Question: Have you previously looked up information about your back on the internet (Google)?

Response: Out of 56 respondents, 35 confirmed that they had looked for information about their back on Google, whereas the remaining 21 had not.
Question: Did you find the information on Google:  Helpful or Not Helpful?
Response: 35 people responded to this question, with 23 of them saying that they found the information helpful and 12 did not find it helpful to them.
And this is where our survey got very interesting, because we then asked the question: Were you able to find the right information to help you manage your back problem?  34 respondents answered this question which had 3 possible responses: Yes, No or Unsure. 

Out of the people who responded, 5 said they were able to find the right information to help them manage their back problem, 10 said they weren’t able to and 19 were left unsure after their search.

We then dug deeper on the trust they had in the information that they sourced from Dr Google by asking: Did you trust that the information you found on Google was accurate for your problem?  Once again we had 34 respondents, 4 of which said yes; 10 said no and 20 were unsure.  One respondent left a comment saying that they felt there was no substitute for professional knowledge.

So what does this tell us?

At PhysioWizard®, we found these responses incredibly reassuring. 

Why? 

Because they clearly demonstrate that people are comfortable turning to online solutions when they have a health issue.  They also appear to be relatively happy with the high level information that Dr Google gives them, but when it comes to drilling deeper they are typically left feeling disappointed or dissatisfied. 
How does this help us achieve our goals at PhysioWizard®?  

These findings help to reassure us that our vision is realistic and fits well with where consumers, patients, call them what you prefer, are on their online health journey.  They are already turning to Dr Google, which means that they’re happy to reveal their fears, worries and symptoms online.  However, perhaps overwhelmed by the overload of information or perhaps lacking the direction needed to get to the right solution, many leave their online search without feeling as if they’ve significantly moved forward.  But what if these same people’s enthusiasm for online solutions was more guided, more targeted and came with a human support?  There is where we believe the magic lies.  We believe that technology plus human intervention is a magical and highly powerful combination.  And the great news is - that’s exactly what our PhysioWizard® solution provides.
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If you’re an Occupational Health professional, Private Health Care provider or are in the Public Health Sector and would like to find out more about how PhysioWizard® could make life easier for you and your patients, why not request a demo?

It is now an accepted fact that any website that’s aiming to appeal to a broad audience needs to be responsive, so it functions equally well across desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.  This requirement is a given for web developers and business owners alike, but what particularly interests us at PhysioWizard® is understanding more about how people choose to search for health information online. 
We’re keen to know more about people’s preferred device when it comes to health self-assessment.  Our specific areas of interest relate to whether people are more likely to feel comfortable answering self-assessment questions on their phone, their laptop or their desktop for example?  Also, we’re keen to know which operating systems they use and how they see the future of health self-assessment.
With this desire to know more in mind, we recently set about asking a sample of potential online health solution searchers these questions:

1. Would you prefer to do your assessment on a: Smart Phone, Tablet, Laptop or Personal Computer?
2. Which operating system do you use:  Windows, Android or Apple (Mac)?
3. How valuable do you think online health self-assessments will be in the future?

Here are the responses we got:

Preferred devices
When it comes to choosing which device to turn to, an overwhelming 46.81% of respondents said they would prefer to do their assessment on a smart phone, 27.66% on a tablet, 36.17% on a laptop and only 19.15% on a personal computer.

Preferred operating system
In our study, 21 out of 47 respondents use Windows, 14 Android and 19 Apple (Mac).

The value of online health self-assessment?
This free-form question gave rise to a range of interesting results going from very valuable to not very valuable.  However, it was the responses in between these two extremes that were the most interesting. 
From the responses we got, it appears that there is a general consensus that online health self-assessments are valuable, which is encouraging.  What’s more, most people say that they would find this type of solution even more valuable if combined with a human element, which is what we at PhysioWizard® provide.  What we are seeing is a real desire for reliable, accessible, comprehensive and comprehensible information that people have fast and easy access to.  Very encouraging indeed.  Why?  Because once again this reinforces our vision.
As we’ve said before, at PhysioWizard®, our goal is not to replace human intervention in muscle and joint problem triage and treatment, it is to relieve skilled professionals of the run of the mill tasks that are a drain on resources and a frustration for patients.  We believe that a clever combination of the right technology, presented in the right way to patients, with quality human support as a backup really is the key to getting people well faster.  This belief is at the core of everything we are doing to develop and promote our fast and effective solution.  We hope you share our vision and would love to hear your thoughts on the future of health self-assessment.
If you’re an Occupational Health professional, Private Health Care provider or are in the Public Health Sector and would like to find out more about how PhysioWizard® could make life easier for you and your patients, why not request a demo?