Niranjan Bidargaddi*, Flinders university & Country Health SA, Adelaide, Australia Geoffrey Schrader, Country Health SA LHN, Adelaide, Australia Melanie Harris, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia Lareen Newman, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia Sarah Lynn, Uniting Care Wesley Port Adelaide, Mt Gambier, Australia Leigh Peterson, Country Health SA, Mt Gambier, Australia Malcolm Battersby, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia Track: Research Presentation Topic: Collaborative biomedical research, academic / scholarly communication, publishing and peer review Presentation Type: Rapid-Fire Presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Mermaid Room: Room 3 - Upper River Room Date: 2013-09-24 02:00 PM – 03:30 PM Last modified: 2013-09-25 Free Full Paper

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Background
Patients with multiple chronic conditions have high hospitalizations, low levels of functional capacity, and require high level of care and support that needs to be planned and coordinated involving services from multiple organizations. E-health and mobile solutions are argued to be useful in collaborative care planning, coordination and providing feedback. Ehealth solutions are also seen as particularly beneficial for rural Australians to overcome travel barriers to healthcare.

Objective
To explore the feasibility of an e-health supported chronic disease management program for rural people with people with both chronic physical and mental health conditions, or with high risk for this comorbidity, and to study the technology interaction characteristics in this group.

Methods
We developed an e-health system from an existing well proven chronic disease management program and an existing software platform accessible by both patient and health worker using smart phone or computer. We piloted the system in rural people with comorbid mental health and physical health conditions or risk factors to assess feasibility of delivery, patient acceptance and engagement, areas for system development, and collection of health outcome measures.

Results
The eHealth system was piloted with 11 recently hospitalized rural patients, average age 63 (SD = 9) years, each with an average of 5 chronic conditions and high level of psychological distress with an average K10 score of 32.20 (SD = 5.81). Study participants interacted with the e-Health system. Average number of logins to the e-Health system by the study participants was 26.4 (SD = 23.5) over a period of 29 weeks. The login activity was higher early in the week.

Conclusions
The pilot study demonstrated that an existing chronic disease management program can be successfully transferred to an existing e-health platform for combined face-to-face and e-health delivery. The pilot also highlighted the potential of further work on patient engagement. This includes identifying patient groups which most readily take on e-health delivery and which groups would be (further) disadvantaged if e-health was the only delivery mode; optimising the balance between technology and face-to-face delivery within a program; and collaborative design to improve effectiveness and value.