How HealthShare’s digital tools can provide educational support for back pain

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that 4.0 million (16%) people in Australia were estimated to be living with back problems in 2022. General Practitioners (GPs) are often the first point of contact with the health care system for people with back problems.

Pain is the main symptom of most back problems and is a common problem presenting to GPs. There is a lack of consistent approach on back pain treatment and the mismanagement of low back pain often involves unnecessary treatments (Wheeler et al. 2018).

The Back Pain Project

A core component of care for the management of back pain is providing educational support. However, high quality information can be hard to find and there is little scientific evidence on the best resources to provide to patients.

HealthShare worked with leading scientists at NeuRA’s Centre of Pain IMPACT, UNSW, and University of Sydney on a major project to not only increase the number of people accessing high quality information for back pain, but also to test which type of patient resource was best.

The Back Pain Project was led by Prof James McAuley (NeuRA, UNSW) and Dr Adrian Traeger (USyd). The project team included GPs, patients, back pain experts, behavioural scientists, sociologists, and project staff.

Access to educational support for back pain

The Back Pain Project is the first time a study has been conducted on a large scale in routine clinical practice in the world. Through our pre-consultation questionnaire BetterConsult and FactSheets tools, we embedded back pain fact sheets such as the Jama Patient Page in the consultation software of over 11,000 GPs.

Around 15,000 people requested the back pain fact sheets over a 10-month project period and the project revealed critical insights into which fact sheets work best for patients. The project showed that access to high quality educational supports via HealthShare’s tools can improve preparedness for decision-making.

Next steps

Prof James McAuley and Dr Adrian Traeger intend to publish their results in a peer reviewed medical journal. This project is the first in a series of collaborative projects between UNSW, University of Sydney, and HealthShare that aim to continually optimise how technology can be used to deliver better health outcomes.

References

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2024, June 17). Chronic musculoskeletal conditions : Back problems. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/chronic-musculoskeletal-conditions/back-problems

Wheeler, L., Karran, E., & Harvie, D. (2018, September). Low back pain. Australian Journal of General Practice. https://www1.racgp.org.au/ajgp/2018/september/low-back-pain

About HealthShare

HealthShare is a leading digital health company. We are dedicating to improving health outcomes for patients through our innovative products for GPs, Specialists, Health organisations and more. To see how we can help you, visit our main website.