• Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Mail
  • Youtube
  • Our care
      • Our care
      • St Luke’s at home
      • St Luke’s urgent care service
      • St Luke’s at Derriford
      • St Luke’s at Turnchapel
      • Patient and Family Support Service
      • Therapy
      • Patches for children
      • Submit a care review
      • our care
      • patients and carers
  • Get involved
      • Get involved
      • Donate
      • Fundraising and events
      • Volunteering
      • Make a Regular Gift
      • In Memory Giving
      • Lottery
      • Corporate Fundraising
      • Wills and legacies
      • Key Investor
      • Gift aid
      • Compassionate communities
  • Shops
      • Shops
      • ebay shop
      • b.kinda
      • Furniture collection service
      • Volunteering
      • Shops
      • Furniture collection service
  • Education
      • Courses and education
      • University modules
      • Six steps + programme
      • Compassionate communities
      • Compassionate city
      • Projects and partnerships
      • Apprenticeships and placements
      • Education and courses
      • Plymouth a compassionate city
  • Information hub
      • Information hub
      • Patients and carers
      • Healthcare professionals
      • Derriford EOL hub
      • End of life care champions
      • Medical students
      • Advance care planning
      • Compassionate city
      • Dying matters
      • Hospice UK
      • Patients and carers
      • Healthcare professionals
  • About us
      • About us
      • Job vacancies
      • Our supporter promise
      • Our strategy
      • Governance
      • Trustees and management
      • Our history
      • Information protection
      • FAQs
      • Press and media
      • St Luke’s at a glance
      • FAQs
      • Job vacancies
  • Contact us
    • Contact us
    • Feedback
    • Complaints
    • Find us
  • Donate
  • Menu Menu
  • Our care
    • Our care
    • St Luke’s at home
    • St Luke’s urgent care service
    • St Luke’s at Derriford
    • St Luke’s at Turnchapel
    • Patient and Family Support Service
    • Therapy
    • Patches for children
    • Submit a care review
  • Get involved
    • Get involved
    • Donate
    • Fundraising and events
    • Volunteering
    • Make a Regular Gift
    • In Memory Giving
    • Lottery
    • Corporate fundraising
    • Wills and legacies
    • Key Investor
    • Gift Aid
    • Compassionate Communities
  • Shops
    • Shops
    • eBay shop
    • b.kinda
    • Furniture collection service
    • Volunteering
  • Education
    • Education and Courses
    • University modules
    • Six Steps + programme
    • Plymouth a compassionate city
    • Projects and partnerships
    • Apprenticeships and placements
  • Information hub
    • Information hub
    • Patients and carers
    • Healthcare professionals
    • Derriford Hospital EOL hub
    • End of life care champions
    • Medical students
    • Advance care planning
    • Plymouth a compassionate city
    • Dying matters
    • Hospice UK
  • About us
    • About us
    • Job Vacancies
    • Our supporter promise
    • Our strategy
    • Governance
    • Trustees and management
    • Our history
    • Information protection
    • FAQs
    • Press and media
    • St Lukes at a glance
  • Contact us
    • Contact us
    • Feedback
    • Complaints
    • Find us
  • Donate
Clinical Newsletter, latest news

BLOG: Sky’s the limit for Echo

The adage that we’re stronger together couldn’t be more true than within health care. With increasing pressures on resources, mutual support together with sharing of knowledge and experience is more critical than ever.

There’s no denying that technology has a crucial role to play in this, and that’s where Project Echo comes in.

Harnessing video-conferencing technology and structures, this exciting project is breaking down some of the traditional barriers and ‘expert to non-expert’ teaching hierarchies by creating networks of shared learning so that more people benefit. Importantly, it recognises that in many ways we are all both learners and teachers. For example, in a care home the health care assistant is often more of an expert on a particular patient than the palliative care expert based miles away.

Dr Jeff Stephenson, Medical Director at St Luke’s, said: “Project Echo is an innovative new concept, creating a learning and mentoring network that enables non-experts to develop more confidence in looking after patients where they are.

“Those involved have no need to travel as they can access Project Echo meetings simply by using their smartphone, and the narrow band width used means it’s all relatively glitch free. On their screen, they can see the various ‘spokes’ and participate in an inclusive, structured discussion.”

Where it originated in the US state of New Mexico, Project Echo is already making a big difference in improving patient care. Its founder, a professor of hepatology in a teaching hospital, came up with the idea when considering ways to address the challenge of thousands of people from across the state needing his care versus the limited time he had available to treat them. With many dying unnecessarily from Hepatitis C – a curable liver disease – there was a real urgency to his quest.

And so Project Echo was born as a way of using technology to disseminate his specialist knowledge to hundreds of local family practitioners so that they could then give patients the expert care required. Over time, with thousands of patients being treated close to home the professor’s waiting list fell dramatically to just two weeks.

This illustrates the huge positive impact just one specialist can make on the lives of many through sharing their expertise via the network facilitated by Project Echo.

The project couldn’t be a better fit with St Luke’s status as a ‘hospice without walls’, enabling those with a terminal illness to receive the best care regardless of where they are. Dr Jeff said:

“Obviously, it is impossible for us to see everyone, so Project Echo is about equipping professionals wherever they are to care appropriately for their patients.

“The aim is for St Luke’s to become a specialist hub, co-ordinating and running Echo meetings and linking up non-experts through a network. The first network we intend to establish will be with local care homes. We will meet around once a month and link up to as many as want to be engaged.

“This provides an opportunity for some teaching and case-based discussion that will equip and increase the confidence of nurses, health care assistants and other professionals in care home settings without us having to be directly involved.”

Looking further ahead, Project Echo has exciting potential to bring big benefits in clinical settings. For example, networks around palliative care could include local community hospitals, district nurse teams and GP practices. However, its use needn’t be confined to this area.

Dr Jeff said: “Blue sky thinking is that eventually there could be a palliative care services network that benefits less developed countries. A specialist hub could link with several cities around the world to provide invaluable training, resources and support to them. The sky really is the limit!”

National perspective – Hospice UK Project Echo

Credit | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for additional content.

23rd July 2018
Share this entry
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on WhatsApp
  • Share on Pinterest
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share by Mail
https://www.stlukes-hospice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/PROJECT_ECHO_BLOG_HEADER.jpg 773 1030 Robert Maltby https://www.stlukes-hospice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/st-lukes-hospice-plymouth.svg Robert Maltby2018-07-23 12:24:192018-07-23 14:28:56BLOG: Sky’s the limit for Echo

Our Care

  • St Luke’s at home
  • St Luke’s urgent care service
  • St Luke’s at Derriford
  • St Luke’s at Turnchapel
  • Lymphoedema
  • Patient and Family Support Service
  • Therapy
  • Feedback and complaints

Support us

  • Donate
  • Fundraising
  • Volunteering
  • Lottery
  • Corporate fundraising
  • Sponsor a St Luke’s nurse
  • St Luke’s Memory Tree
  • Wills and legacies
  • Key Investor
  • Our shops
  • Tribute funds

Courses

  • University modules
  • Six Steps + programme
  • Projects and partnerships
  • Apprenticeships and placements

Information

  • About us
  • Contact us
  • How we use your personal information (GDPR)
  • Advance care planning
  • Patients and carers
  • Medical students
  • Healthcare professionals
  • End of life care champions
  • Compassionate communities
  • Job Vacancies
  • Our history
  • Our supporter promise
  • Press and media
  • SLH Ventures Gambling Commission Licence
© Copyright 2022 - St Luke's Hospice Plymouth is a registered charity number 280681, VAT registration number 108 2418 38 & a company limited by guarantee, number 1505753. - Web Design by The Ambitions Agency
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Mail
  • Youtube
PR: Government will not fund hospices to match the NHS pay award, resulting...BLOG: 2018 Impact Report out now!
Scroll to top

We use cookies to give you the best possible online experience. If you continue, we’ll assume you are happy for your web browser to receive all cookies from our website.

View how we use cookiesView how we protect your personal informationAccept cookiesProceed without cookies

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Accept settingsHide notification only