NHS Staff Digital Wellbeing Via AirEmail (NHS DigiWell)

October 30, 2023 updated by: AirEmail Holdings Limited

Single Cohort Pilot Study With NHS Staff to Investigate the Impact on Their Ability to Manage Work Email, Improve Email Productivity, and Digital Wellbeing Before and After Use of the AirEmail v1 Digital Tool in Outlook

The goal of this "digital health intervention" study is to test a novel email management tool called "AirEmail" (version 1, or v1) for its impact on improving key aspects of healthcare email management.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

  • What are the effects of technostress in staff employed by the National Health Service (NHS)?
  • Can the AirEmail digital tool improve email productivity?
  • Can the AirEmail digital tool improve participant digital wellbeing?

Participants will use AirEmail for a period of 4 weeks as part of their routine management of healthcare email. This active use period will be preceded and followed by 2 weeks of an "observational mode" in which email use data is collected.

Researchers will compare participants in the active study group with participants in the contemporary observational group to see if the volume and patterns of email communications have been affected by external factors or AirEmail use.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

The NHS DigiWell study is a Before and After Study of a "digital health intervention" testing a novel digital email management tool called "AirEmail" for its impact on improving key aspects of healthcare email management. AirEmail is a Microsoft 365 Outlook registered add-in, a software programme extending the capabilities of, and automating tasks in, Microsoft Outlook.

The study aims to determine the overall effect of the AirEmail Digital Tool over a period of 4 weeks on NHS staff email productivity and digital wellbeing. The active use period will be preceded by 2 weeks of "observational mode" in which email use data will be collected and 2 weeks in which participants will complete induction training. There will be further 2 weeks of "observational mode" following the active period.

Email use statistics data will also be collected from a contemporary observational group for a 10 weeks coinciding with the time period in which active group participants complete the study.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

172

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  1. NHS staff employed at a participating NHS organisation with an active NHS IT account, Microsoft 365 access, and routinely using the Microsoft Outlook app on a computer for email management.
  2. Age ≥ 18 years.
  3. Able to communicate fluently in English.
  4. Have been employed in the same NHS trust for at least 3 months prior to study participation and likely remain employed in the same NHS trust for another at least 3 months.
  5. Contracted to work for ≥0.5 full-time equivalent (FTE).
  6. Willing to complete study assessments and agree to non-identifiable email usage data being collected for the duration of the study.
  7. Currently has (or agrees to create prior to joining the study) ≥500 megabytes of available storage in their NHSmail inbox (the usual total storage capacity of which is 4 gigabytes), and agrees not to exceed their NHSmail storage quota for the duration of the trial to ensure NHSmail performance is not adversely affected by the AirEmail Digital Tool processing and the study data collection.
  8. Willing and able to engage IT support to seek resolution of email related issues as required.
  9. Meets at least one of the following criteria: a) Receives ≥50 emails a day, or b) sends ≥20 emails a day, or c) spends ≥2 hours in email management on a busy day, in/from their individual inbox, or d) feels dissatisfied with their ability to manage email to an acceptable standard.
  10. Willing and able to complete study training activities - estimated to require approximately 45 minutes over a period of maximum 2 weeks - and to configure their email and use the AirEmail v1 features as part of their NHS employment for the duration of the study.

Exclusion Criteria:

  1. Currently absent from work for a period lasting, or likely to last, ≥4 weeks, or have returned from long-term absence/leave of ≥4 weeks in ≤4 weeks before joining the study.
  2. Plans to take ≥8 working days of Annual Leave coinciding with study participation.
  3. Currently participating in another interventional study in the field of digital wellbeing or digital communications.
  4. Receives high-volume, high-risk patient-related communication. Note: This would apply for staff employed in clinical pathway coordinator roles, or similar, where even an hour of downtime would compromise patient care.
  5. Has any specific accessibility requirements not catered for by the AirEmail v1 application (for example colour blindness which makes seeing highlighted words in Outlook a problem).
  6. Relies on using Microsoft Outlook's "categories" feature to manage administrative or clinical workflows.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: Non-Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Active Study Group
Participants actively using the AirEmail v1 Digital Tool features.
Other: Email use data collection
Participants will initiate the AirEmail v1 Digital Tool. Non-identifiable email use data will be collected.
Other: AirEmail Tips and Tricks training
Participants will watch the "AirEmail Tips and Tricks" training videos ahead of using the AirEmail v1 Digital Tool
Other: AirEmail v1 Digital Tool use
Participants will use the AirEmail v1 Digital Tool features as part of their routine email management in NHSmail, the NHS's Microsoft 365 Outlook platform.
Placebo Comparator: Contemporary Observational Group
Participants whose email use data is collected via the AirEmail v1 Digital Tool
Other: Email use data collection
Participants will initiate the AirEmail v1 Digital Tool. Non-identifiable email use data will be collected.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Email productivity
Time Frame: 10 weeks
Self-reported email use productivity
10 weeks
Digital wellbeing
Time Frame: 10 weeks
Self-reported digital wellbeing
10 weeks

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Volume of email activity
Time Frame: 10 weeks
Number of emails received/sent, their categories and importance
10 weeks
Email use productivity - specific AirEmail features
Time Frame: 10 weeks
Self reported email use productivity - specific AirEmail features
10 weeks
Digital wellbeing - specific AirEmail features
Time Frame: 10 weeks
Self-reported digital wellbeing - specific AirEmail features
10 weeks

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Email curation
Time Frame: 10 weeks
Number/percentage of emails in the curation categories
10 weeks

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

AirEmail Holdings Limited

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Jay Mehta, Dr, AirEmail Holdings Limited, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

July 11, 2023

Primary Completion (Estimated)

December 11, 2023

Study Completion (Estimated)

December 11, 2023

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

July 13, 2023

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

October 30, 2023

First Posted (Actual)

November 1, 2023

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

November 1, 2023

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

October 30, 2023

Last Verified

October 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2022001

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

YES

IPD Plan Description

Study participants provide consent for sharing anonymized data for the purpose of further research in the field of technostress and digital communications.

IPD Sharing Time Frame

Data will be available from 2024

IPD Sharing Access Criteria

Any requests related to ethically approved studies in this field will be considered by the Sponsor.

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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