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How Technology Supports Smoking Cessation Services

Technology

Dec 15, 2022 - 5 minute read

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Jane Coyne Tobacco Dependence Treatment Programme Lead at NHS Greater Manchester and Tobacco Dependence Treatment Programme Lead Midwife at NHS England Prevention Team

Jane leads the design and delivery of Greater Manchester’s Tobacco Dependence Treatment Programme and works alongside partners both regionally and nationally to support a nationally prioritised programme of work to reduce smoking during pregnancy.

In partnership with Health Innovation Manchester, Jane and her team have successfully created an innovative and specialised record-keeping programme for maternity-led stop-smoking teams, with the ultimate ambition to ensure those who smoke at the start of pregnancy are supported to stop.

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Tobacco remains the single biggest cause of preventable death, disability, illness, and social inequality. Unless they quit, 2 out of 3 smokers will die from smoking. Smokers are also 36% more likely to be admitted to a hospital and need social care 10 years before they should.

In England, almost 6 million people still smoke, and the cost of smoking to society totals £17.04 billion each year. This staggering amount is a result of a combination of factors such as the increased likelihood of smokers falling ill or dying prematurely while still of working age, their need for more extensive and earlier health and social care, and even smoking-related fires causing injury, death, and property damage.

Tobacco addiction is a chronic relapsing disease that often begins in childhood. There are many highly effective treatments for this disease, but their successful delivery at scale requires an efficient, holistic strategy and specialist support. In this article, I will share my experience of leading smoking cessation initiatives at the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership (GM ICP), previously Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP), and discuss how technology can contribute to the expansion and acceleration of stop-smoking support required to achieve the goal of improved prevention set by the NHS Long Term Plan.

A Comprehensive Approach to Tackling Tobacco Addiction

The problem of tobacco dependency is complex and requires a broader perspective as well as action on many different levels. There is still a strong link between smoking and health inequalities — the more disadvantaged someone is, the more likely they are to smoke and be exposed to the associated risk of severe illness and premature death.

While nicotine addiction afflicts people with lower income more frequently, socio-economic status isn’t the only factor in smoking-related health inequalities. Smoking rates are also higher among people with mental health conditions whose life expectancy is lower than the general population’s due to smoking-induced health issues.

Smoking harms entire families as well — with children developing asthma and other respiratory disorders because of parental smoking. Infants born to people who smoke are weaker, and we’re observing more cases of stillbirth and miscarriage among smokers.

At Greater Manchester, we understand the need to tackle wider social and commercial determinants of health to deliver both better health outcomes and reductions in health inequalities. The region has pioneered innovative stop smoking offers across secondary care and community settings. Evidence-based and clinically led, they recognise the role of healthcare professionals in driving transformation and leverage bespoke technology solutions helping the specialist staff to build a true partnership with their patients on their journey to quit.

The Smokefree Pregnancy Platform — A Pioneer Digital Solution

An example of a transformative digital tool, the GM Smokefree Pregnancy Platform, has been supporting GM ICP’s Smokefree Pregnancy programme since 2020. Developed and deployed in partnership with Objectivity at the height of the pandemic, the platform is a key tool for specialist midwives who work with their patients throughout their pregnancy to support their efforts to quit.

By digitising and simplifying the patient data collection process, the platform relieves the midwives of the administrative burden and allows them to dedicate more time to their patients. The programme participants’ needs are managed more efficiently, the staff’s calendars are shared and synchronised, and their various tasks are automated. The application supports additional functions, such as incentivising patients to keep them on track, and is still being expanded with additional functionalities.

The platform also ensures we have trustworthy and up-to-date data, which allows us to accurately monitor our progress and outcomes. Since its introduction, we’ve been able to enrol more participants in the Smokefree Pregnancy programme and successfully help them quit — our smoking in pregnancy rates have dropped from 12.6% in 2017/18 to 9.5% in 2021/22. This bespoke tool proves how efficient digital solutions can be in improving health outcomes, and we’re looking into ways of replicating what we’ve learned and achieved in other initiatives at a local and national level as well.

The Role of Technology in Smoking Cessation

The rollout and ultimate success of the GM Smokefree Pregnancy Platform shed more light on the possibilities technology can offer to the general strategy of making smoking history. While we explore our options for leveraging other digital solutions, we take into account several aspects that will help us achieve the best outcomes:

  • Collaboration enablement

The right solution not only improves the collaboration among healthcare professionals but also among them and their patients. By enabling efficient information exchange and open conversation, such a solution allows clinicians and their patients to form a trust-based partnership, with both sides working hand-in-hand towards the same goal — smoking cessation and improved patient health and well-being.

  • Actionable data

Collecting, analysing, and acting upon patient data is crucial to monitoring their status and adjusting our approach to always address their needs. Moreover, digitising the data collection process frees up clinical staff’s time, which they can then devote to actual patient care. Finally, it’s difficult to overestimate the importance of dependable, well-visualised data in managing and improving stop-smoking initiatives and measuring the results.

  • Interoperability

While achieving the interoperability of healthcare systems remains a challenge yet to be addressed, it’s still worth looking into ways of connecting and integrating tools and processes supporting stop-smoking programmes. Such connectivity could help further improve the initiatives’ outcomes by extending the support network to pharmacies, physicians, and other medical staff, reducing the time needed for collecting all relevant information, and helping everyone involved make more informed decisions.

Looking Ahead

Tobacco has no place in the future we’re striving to build for people across all groups and locations in Greater Manchester and nationally. To further enhance the results of our smoking cessation initiatives, we want to establish and maintain connections with many more potential quitters, provide the specialist staff with the best possible tools and resources, and enable intelligence-led planning, service design, and decision-making.

Our Smokefree Pregnancy programme trailblazed a pathway of leveraging a bespoke solution to help people quit smoking, and it’s worth exploring how this success can be translated to our other initiatives, such as CURE (our acute care stop smoking service for inpatients) or our support for patients with mental health conditions. Our stop-smoking strategy is centred on improving the patients’ outcomes and experience while supporting the clinical staff, and the use of technology can help us achieve our ambitions in line with the Quadruple Aim of Healthcare.

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Jane Coyne Tobacco Dependence Treatment Programme Lead at NHS Greater Manchester and Tobacco Dependence Treatment Programme Lead Midwife at NHS England Prevention Team

Jane leads the design and delivery of Greater Manchester’s Tobacco Dependence Treatment Programme and works alongside partners both regionally and nationally to support a nationally prioritised programme of work to reduce smoking during pregnancy.

In partnership with Health Innovation Manchester, Jane and her team have successfully created an innovative and specialised record-keeping programme for maternity-led stop-smoking teams, with the ultimate ambition to ensure those who smoke at the start of pregnancy are supported to stop.

See all Jane's posts

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