Athinyaa Thiraviaraj

Athinyaa is a consultant physician in endocrinology within the Western Trust. She works with young people aged between 18-24 and says what I am creating is addressing an unmet need, considering health professionals are still using the same methods from 15-20 years ago. She agrees there is a niche in there considering young people constantly have their phones infront of them.

She encouraged me to think about things such as would the patient be responsible for downloading the app. Would there be a healthcare interface?

Athinyaa is most familiar with the freestyle libre flash glucose monitoring. She said informing young people through food would also be helpful on the dietician side of things too, like what DAFNE tried to do. At our target audience age, young people are staying to have their own independence, a young person focused model would be good.  She liked how adults aren’t being excluded through an guardian side to the app but more power to the young person.

She has tried to do something similar before but it ended up falling through due to her not having enough time. She said it would be helpful to see certain topics on the app that are ‘taboo’, in the pediatrics clinic, they don’t talk about pregnancy, sex or alcohol there.

T1resources.uk. that’s where athinya would sign post her patients.  Its the most cohesive space but you have to go in and search for what you’re looking for, it doesn’t push towards you.

An educational app would be most beneficial. NHS change their data quite a lot and on a full time basis so you would need to make sure it was all accurate.

Evaluation in health care context - Is it to improve knowledge? Improve behaviour? Athinyaa spends 8-9 hours educating every newly diagnosed type 1 diabetic.  If you can reduce that 8 to a 6 or to a 4 that is needed.  No young person can understand their life changing condition info in a couple of days. However, if a young person comes back using our app and gains xp points on the app the nurses will see this and see their learning at home.

Athinyaa will be able to talk less if she can show an app.  The young person has a lot more power, its saying to the young person, here are the tools and you lead the way.  The app must be a customer centred approach.

A little win 100% is better than a large win at 40%. Focus on making small habit changes and your onto a winner.