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Healthera announces Innovate UK £1m collaboration

Healthera has announced the formation of a consortium with Cegedim Rx, the largest provider of pharmacy software in the UK market. The consortium has entered a £1 million, 18-month collaborative agreement, co-funded by Innovate UK, focused on researching and developing a connected digital solution for patients and pharmacies.The purpose of the collaboration is to create a new digital health solution that will increase the level of

The purpose of the collaboration is to create a new digital health solution that will increase the level of medical compliance for patients, improve the efficiency of pharmacy clinical services, and support pharmacies in becoming first-line clinical providers. The solution will be the first to integrate the patient journey with all aspects of community pharmacy offerings – from medication to services – and has an initial market of 6,000 pharmacies covering 15 million patients with long-term conditions.

Both partners in the collaboration hold proprietary technology in their respective sectors. Cegedim Rx has developed mainstream computer software for pharmacies in the UK market for dispensing medicines and delivering patient services. Healthera has developed a suite of digital health solutions aimed at improving patients’ medicine management and ordering experience. In 2016, Healthera filed a patent for a Prescription Processing Engine, a system which extracts and analyses a patient’s prescriptions and makes recommendations for their intake schedule.

With partial funding from Innovate UK towards the £1m project, the consortium is able to build an integrated solution around the Prescription Processing Engine that seamlessly links patients with their medicines and related pharmacy services, bridging the gap between conventional health apps and clinical professionals.

The aims of this project are closely aligned with the government’s priorities to cut medicine wastage, improve patient care, and put pharmacists in the forefront of clinical service delivery, ultimately improving efficiency of public health and creating more highly skilled employment in the healthcare sector.

Quintus Liu, Chief Executive Officer of Healthera, commented: “The consortium between Healthera and Cegedim Rx is another step forward for the pharmacy sector, with potential to empower thousands of pharmacies with top-of-the-line digital health that ultimately serves millions of NHS patients. The funding from Innovate UK will expedite the project’s development, cementing Healthera and Cegedim Rx’s leading position in the healthcare IT space.”

Gary Hollis, Head of Product Management of Cegedim Rx, commented: “This collaboration with Healthera forms part of our commitment to developing innovative and valuable solutions for the healthcare and pharmacy IT industries. We believe that using digital technology to enable patient-centred care is key to the future of pharmacy and we are confident that the solutions developed as a result of this collaboration will contribute hugely to the transformation of pharmacy IT.”