Hayley Fay
Specialist Occupational Therapist Hand Therapist
Chelsea Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Biography: Hayley is a specialist occupational therapist in hand therapy based at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust with over 17 years of experience in the field. She is the creator of an exercise prescription app: “Hand Therapy”, an innovation delivering care at pace with digital technology. Hayley believes that Digital Transformation is a key enabler to improve patient experience and outcome. Her previous experience includes supporting the local delivery of a large digital transformation project, she also has a special interest in driving quality improvement, streamlining processes and implementing new ways of working.
Horizon Fellowship project summary: The app “Hand Therapy” successfully launched in 2017, and was adopted locally by clinicians, with more than 90% of patients now using the app as part of treatment. With minimal marketing, the downloads have increased year on year, with a spike during the pandemic the app is now seeing downloads of over 8,000 a year across the UK and worldwide.
The project aims are to complete a multi-level evaluation of the app with both patients and clinicians, as well as collating impact data. The data will support an application to ORCHA for DTAC certification and enable our next steps to market the app across the UK aiming for wide-scale adoption across hand units.
Estimated number of patients / staff impacted by the project: 800-1000 clinicians and patients, across UK hand units.
Goal(s) for time on the Horizon Fellowship programme:
- Complete a multi-level evaluation with clinicians and therapists
- Pilot the Carpal Tunnel Virtual pathway
- UK wide adoption of Hand Therapy