In recent years, Martha’s Rule, a national initiative introduced following the preventable death of 13-year-old Martha Mills, has highlighted a critical blind spot in healthcare: the failure to listen to patient and carer concerns before situations escalate into crisis. Although the policy is intended to empower patients and families to escalate care concerns, it also exposes deeper systemic weaknesses in communication, trust, and responsiveness across care settings. Within care homes, these issues are exacerbated by staff shortages, fragmented communication. As a result, despite the growing use of telehealth systems such as the Whzan Blue Box, residents may still experience unnoticed deterioration.
Across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR), the Blue Box has been implemented to support early detection and escalation of health deterioration through remote monitoring. However, findings from a Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS)–funded project (Lu et al., 2025) revealed persistent inequalities in how these systems are adopted and embedded. While some care homes use telehealth data proactively to support collaboration with GPs, others struggle due to workload pressures, limited training, and lack of managerial or clinical engagement.
These findings point to a broader issue: digital health innovations are only as equitable as the social, organisational, and relational systems that support them. This ESRC-funded doctoral project, co-developed with These Hands Academy Ltd, will investigate how telehealth systems can be implemented in ways that genuinely support carers, enhance residents’ wellbeing, and reduce health inequalities in care homes. Using participatory mixed-methods research, the project will work closely with care staff, residents, managers, and regional partners to explore lived experiences of digital care, identify socio-technical barriers, and co-produce practical guidance for more inclusive, human-centred digital health practice.
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