Our story, impact, partners, and supporters
Our story
Life Lines was set up by a team comprising of Professor Louise Rose, a Professor of Critical Care Nursing at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care, King’s College London, Dr Joel Meyer, a critical care consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and Michel Paquet, the CEO of Aetonix, the company that developed aTouchAway™ used for our bespoke virtual visiting solution.
[Pictured right: Dr Joel Meyer (left) and Prof Louise Rose (right) with tablets from the first delivery to support families, patients and clinical teams]
Life Lines was developed and is sustained by a unique partnership of clinicians, academics, companies and charities who shared expertise and resources to help patients and families stay connected during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Partners in this project include King’s College London, King’s Health Partners, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, the True Colours Trust, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, Bray Leino, Google and BT.
To learn more about Life Lines, hear from Prof Louise Rose in discussion with Prof Dame Anne Marie Rafferty, Professor of Nursing Policy at King's College London:
Our impact
Life Lines has supported more than 130,000 virtual visits and over 1 million call minutes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK in March 2020. We provided more than 1,400 4G enabled Android devices to 180 NHS hospitals across the UK.
Patient and family experiences:
Patients and family members supported through Life Lines virtual visiting have shared their experiences:
Watch this video - ICU diaries: patient and relative experience, critical care, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, to learn more about the impact of Life Lines from patient testimonies. It features Katie Susser, Critical Illness Recovery Nurse Specialist, and Kemi Okelana, ICU Diary Lead.
NHS staff experiences:
Healthcare professionals from across the NHS have shared their experiences with us through our research and evaluation:
- Communication and virtual visiting for families of patients in intensive care during COVID-19: a UK national survey (Annals of the American Thoracic Society) - article here.
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Intensive care unit visiting using virtual technology: Barriers, solutions, and opportunities - article here.
Case studies:
Find out more about our impact through the Google Leaptakers project here.
Life Lines - Be with them when you can't be near them:
Life Lines - Be with them when you can't be near them - YouTube
Our partners and supporters
Life Lines would not have been possible without the support and generosity of members of the public and our philanthropic partners.
Funding
Through a Just Giving page and individual donations from members of the public, we raised more than £75,000 to support the initial Life Lines response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Life Lines was further supported by initial funding of £1 million from the True Colours Trust and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. Our partner Google provided a further £1.165 million in funding.
This not only enabled us to continue to deliver the Life Lines original mission of connecting families to patients in intensive care during the pandemic, but also to develop and implement other digital solutions supporting patients and families both in intensive care and during recovery after critical illness. Details of these can be found here [link to box 2 on LL page] and here [link to box 3 on LL page]
Technology partners
To provide Life Lines with 4G-enabled tablets secured by Android Enterprise and pre-loaded with the e-platform aTouchAway™. BT collaborated with its tech partners Google, Samsung and MobileIron
Aetonix, developed the e-platform aTouchAway™ that was modified to a bespoke virtual visiting solution for intensive care by the Life Lines team. In other contexts, the e-platform aTouchAway™ is typically used by clinical teams to support patients with chronic conditions living at home.