This programme award has developed, tested and implemented an online intervention to support the self-management of eczema. The benefits of using the ECO interventions have been demonstrated in two RCTs, targeting two key user groups, and a within-trial CEA suggests that the use of the intervention can result in potential cost savings to the NHS.
There have been many calls for health professionals, and the NHS, to take a greater role in signposting patients towards evidence-based digital resources to support self-management. However, this is not widely practised in the increasingly pressurised context of routine care. In eczema, self-management support is particularly important due to the complexity and high burden of treatment adherence.81 By providing resources that allow health professionals to promote these resources easily, as well as providing evidence that the interventions improve eczema outcomes, we hope that promoting self-management support will become increasingly the new standard of care.
Continuing dissemination following publication of the RCTs in December 2022 and monitoring the uptake of interventions will allow us to track routes to implementation and further build on these. We are pursuing dissemination via charity partners in addition to via health professional signposting, in order to diversify and aim for the intervention to be promoted by multiple routes. The imperative now is for effective implementation of ECO. This is where programmatic funding has been crucial in allowing time to develop the product from research-focused software into highly usable software.