EMPOWER Exploring & Mapping PriOrities for Women’s health technology, Equipment, kit, devices, and pRoducts

Conference:

SAPC ASM 2022 - UCLan

Talk Code:

3E.1

Presenter:

Sharon Dixon

Co-authors:

Abigail McNiven, Neda Taghinejadi, Philip Turner, George Edwards, Sabrina Keating, Gail Hayward, Katy Vincent, Olivia James

Author institutions:

Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Women's and Reproductive Health, University of Oxford, Exeter College, University of Oxford

Problem

Research and development in the field of women’s health has been historically under-prioritised and current policy seeks to address this. Women’s health and well-being could be improved by having new or better ‘technology, including things women use themselves at home and those used by clinicians. However, we do not yet know which unmet needs are felt to be a priority for technology development by women and the clinicians who care for them.

Approach

We used a priority setting partnership approach to bring together women and clinicians views on unmet needs in women’s healthcare and their ideas about possible solutions or improvements in technology that could help with these. With a steering committee comprising primary and secondary care clinicians and PPIE advisers, we co-developed a qualitative survey for women and clinicians which has been distributed widely. In parallel, we are holding 4-6 virtual PPI and stakeholder discussions, sampling across health need, life-course experience, and background. Following this round of stakeholder engagement, we will collate and publish a longlist of potential un-met needs and potential solutions, check for existing technologies which could help and review the evidence for their benefit and hold a partnership priority setting event to develop a top-ten list of priority areas of un-met need.

Findings

Our survey findings to date reveal unmet needs regarding: contraception support including IUCD insertion, pregnancy and labour monitoring; dignified examination of women (including devices which could promote women’s autonomy or self-examination); improved home testing equipment (including smears and infection testing); equipment for prolapse care; and improved dilators. We have received suggestions about many ways in which technology could support women’s health including accessing information and support about their health, to inform healthcare encounters, and to support treatment and care. Technologies which can support the interface between women and encounters with healthcare settings with validated evidence, symptom trackers, information and public health prompts were identified as an area of interest. By the time of conference, we will be able to present our long-list, technology evidence checker resource, and the partnership list of priorities for unmet needs and suggestions for innovations.

Consequences

We intend that the findings of this project will guide both academic and industry teams regarding the priorities for technology development to improve women’s healthcare.

Submitted by:

Sharon Dixon

Funding acknowledgement:

This project was funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) School for Primary Care Research (SPCR) (grant number 525)