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MyHealthE
MyHealthE
What is MyHealthE?
Alongside other partner Trusts we are changing to the way NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and Child Health Services will gather health information about young people who are in contact with their services.
Child Health Services or CAMHS routinely ask you to provide information about your child’s symptoms using questionnaires called routine outcome measures. At present, Child health and CAMHS will ask parents or caregivers to complete paper-based questionnaires on a regular basis over the course of assessment and treatment. Normally these have mainly been sent by mail or handed to families whilst in the waiting room.
Due to Covid related restrictions, a lot of child health and CAMHS work cannot be carried out face to face, and is now conducted remotely over the phone or via video conferencing. This has meant NHS services have needed to modernise to make it easier and safer for families to send information to their clinical teams.
Last year a team of NHS clinicians, researchers and software developers developed a new secure online NHS digital portal called MyHealthE. MyHealthE works by identifying when families were due to fill out new outcome measures and sends text and email reminders to complete the questionnaire online. MyHealthE was designed for use on a smartphone, tablet or a computer.
The MyHealthE team conducted a small trial in SLaM. Ninety-eight caregivers were provided access to MyHealthE and ninety eight continued on the usual paper based forms. We found that people that used myHealthE provided questionnaire information back to CAMHS in over 70% of instances compared to 8% using the traditional approaches.
We also found MyHealthE saved caregivers and clinicians a lot of administrative time, and was generally preferred as means to transfer information between families and clinical teams. From November 2020, we are partnering NHS Trusts will begin a more comprehensive evaluation of MyHealthE to see if accessing questionnaires online improves caregivers’ experience of completing routine outcome measures.
Using MyHealthE
Please click below to find out more about how to use MyHealthE:
Parents and Caregivers
If your NHS Trust has your mobile number or an email (these are often included in the referral letter to Child Health Services/CAMHS) the clinical administrator may enter you on the MHE system. From here you will receive a secure link to register for MHE account online. Once you set up your MHE account, invitations to complete digital questionnaires will be sent electronically to your registered mobile number or email. If you don’t want to receive any messages you can opt out at any time – see below for more details on opting out.
Occasionally, your clinic may also ask you to complete questionnaires on paper. This is because MHE is still under development and does not include all the questionnaire available to clinicians yet.
The MHE system automatically detects when you are due to complete a new online questionnaire and sends an email and text message reminder directing you to the MHE website.
You will be asked to set-up a personal account on MHE website by verifying your child’s date of birth and by choosing a secure password
Passwords must meet the following criteria:
- Must be a minimum of 10 characters
- Must contain at least 2 lowercase letters
- Must contain at least 2 uppercase letters
- Must contain at least 2 numbers
- Must not contain a dictionary word of more than 4 characters
Online questionnaires are completed by logging into your personal account in the MHE system. When a new questionnaire is submitted, your responses will be sent directly to your healthcare provider and feedback report summarising your responses will be stored in your personal MHE account.
The website and online questionnaires can be accessed using any model of computer, laptop or mobile device as long as it is internet enabled.
You can also use the website to look back over your previous responses and summary scores to check your child's progress.
As we do in regular practice, you may also be asked if you are happy for MHE to contact your child’s schoolteacher or college tutor to ask them to complete a similar set of questions. Only once you provide explicit permission, will MHE send a request to school SENCO. No details about your child, including your responses are shared with the school.
Clinicians and Administrators
Clinicians and Administrators
Caregivers and parents whose mobile number or email address mobile have been provided to CAMHS will be entered into the myHealthE secure portal by an approved CAMHS or child health administrator. They will automatically receive a text message, email, or both, inviting them to enrol. If no mobile number or email address is available, the administrator can download a printable letter asking families to register their personalised myHealthE portal using details provided in the letter and update their contact information. Those who sign up, will be sent a reminder each time they are due to complete an outcome measure. The frequency of these reminders can be set and reviewed by the treating care team.
In addition, myHealthE will provide a method for researchers to know which families are available to be contacted by approved researchers for potential enrolment in research studies – providing an online consent for research contact register. It will also allow clinicians to provide signposting to local and national resources which they think may help the enrolled families, which are tailored to the needs identified on their referral.
With the exception of the initial recording of patient’s contact information into the myHealthE portal, there is no further input required from a clinical or administrative team; the system is fully automated. The system will provide staff with an option to generate a downloadable report for each patient, which can be subsequently uploaded as an attachment to the patient’s clinical record.
If a parent or caregiver consents via myHealthE, a request is also sent to teachers to enrol themselves and complete a complementary set of questionnaires. Teachers will only able to see the questionnaires responses they have completed. The clinician can see both caregiver and teacher questionnaires, and will have access to a report with both informants’ responses automatically scored.
Video guides
Teachers and Education Staff
Teachers and Education Staff
If a parent provides us with the name of their child’s school and agrees for the school to be contacted, we will email the school with a secure link to register for myHealthE password protected online account.
Feedback from teachers suggest that it is best that a single account is created for each school and therefore, all requests to complete questionnaires for an individual child will be sent electronically to the school’s registered account that is affiliated with the school SENCO email address.
We will ask that each email request is forwarded to an appropriate staff member; for example school SENCO or the class teacher, who is able to provide information about the child. This request should be forwarded with login information of how to access the school’s myHealthE account.
The number of requests received by each school will vary and will depend on the number of children at the school who are under CAMHS care. Typically, we will ask for questionnaires to be completed every six months for each child. Occasionally, schools may receive a request to complete questionnaires on paper. This is because myHealthE is still under development and does not yet include the full range of questionnaires used by clinicians.
MyHealthE - Privacy Policy
Are my responses confidential?
All information provided via the online questionnaires will be stored and protected on secure NHS servers and treated as confidential information in the same way all NHS healthcare records are managed.
For information about data security and privacy, please see the MHE privacy policy.
Opting out
It is completely up to you whether you want to use MHE. Whether you enrol in MHE or not, it will not affect the children receive from Child Health/CAMHS. There are several options to opt out:
- You can choose to ignore the MHE enrolment invitations.
- Your can let a Child Health/CAMHS team administrator or allocated NHS worker know you do not want to enrol.
- You can email myHealthe-helpdesk@slam.nhs.uk. We aim to respond to enquiries within two working days.
Further details
If you would like to read more about the team who developed myHealthE, please visit our page on the Centre for Transformational Informatics page.
If you want to get in touch with the myHealthE team, please email us at: myHealthe-helpdesk@slam.nhs.uk
