Background There is growing need for palliative care in the UK, and the hospice wants to help meet that need for the local community. The desired outcome is to develop digital technology that supports more patients and their families/carers.

Aims To explore whether an app or wearable could support more people at end of life and their loved ones to access palliative care and support at home, helping to develop and maintain relationships by providing human intervention, when they need it.

Methods Over a 3-month period patients’ and carers’ needs were explored through a series of face-to-face workshops, telephone interviews and questionnaires. Staff workshops were held with the community team to explore their views and ideas. A set of personas were developed to illustrate their needs, and everyone was brought together to refine the idea.

Results What was important to patients and their carers was supporting their quality of life (less focus on medications), identifying and supporting those in emotional distress, carer burden and burnout in the last months of life, knowing what and where to seek help from, with a more holistic focus. They wanted information about what to expect in the future, easily accessible, without having to search through multiple leaflets and contact numbers. Most importantly they wanted access to a human voice.

Conclusion The refined idea was to produce a web app which will have 3 main components:

1. Information about what the hospice can help with.

2. Self–assessments for patients and carers to monitor if things are changing and support them to contact the hospice.

3. What to expect in the future.

The next stage is to prototype and co-design the web app with users over a 5-month period and aim to have a minimum viable product to test during the next phase.