Physiotherapy student co-creation for published smartphone app review

Last year was the first year of a new Level 6 unit on the Physiotherapy programme called “Innovation in Physiotherapy”, and as unit lead I was keen to encourage the students to appraise smartphone apps in healthcare. Much of my research to date has been looking at “eHealth” (electronic health) and I was keen for them to have more awareness of these growing forms of healthcare adjuncts.

The students worked in groups to select their apps and then present their app reviews to the class, and following this they were encouraged to write up their app reviews and submit them for publication. I am happy to say that along with Adam Arthur, Alastair Bolton, Alex Evens and Philip Slemon, we have had our app review (“World Rugby Concussion’ by World Rugby Limited: a smartphone application for the general public”) published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine (Impact factor 6.724). This is my first co-creation paper with students since arriving at BU, and hopefully this process can be replicated in future years in the unit.

The article can be found at:

http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2017/09/27/bjsports-2017-098185.full