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NHSX announces 35 projects as part of its new Adoption Fund

NHSX has announced the winners of its new ‘Adoption Fund’ to support 35 projects with a share of £6.5 million in funding.

The funding programme was launched to support initiatives covering gastroenterology pathways, musculoskeletal pathways, perioperative pathways, digital inclusion, and cardiology and cardiac surgery.

Following 138 applications to the programme, a review panel selected 35 applications to support, who demonstrated evidence that they are in line with ‘current priorities around elective recovery’.

The winners of the programme include:

Gastroenterology

  • Automated SMS and patient videos to improve bowel preparation quality for colonoscopy
  • IBDoc: Gastro remote care & monitoring
  • Home faecal calprotectin testing pilot in an area of high social deprivation
  • Automated endoscopy bowel prep pre-assessment and patient education
  • Integrating e-Health into the IBD patient pathway using virtual monitoring and faecal calprotectin home testing
  • Supported self-management and remote monitoring of IBD patients within Herefordshire and Worcestershire
  • IBD Home: Patient initiated supported self-management care model
  • Establishing an integrated PIFU assessment service for stable IBD patients in Manchester

Digital Health Inequality Pioneers

  • EDAMS: Empowering Digital Access in Maternity Services
  • 100 Day Health Equity Challenge: BP at home
  • Digital exclusion mapping
  • Reducing Inequalities: A key deliverable of the adult community mental health transformation
  • Digital exclusion feasibility study: South West London MSK app
  • Florence Nightingale Dermatology photographic hub
  • Reducing digital inequalities in maternity services for asylum seekers
  • Piloting the route to make inclusion planning standard in digital mental health transformation projects
  • Flexible digital inclusion model for pathways using a digital product or service
  • Increasing confidence, knowledge, support and skills with rural communities in Devon to help tackle digital and health inequalities

Musculoskeletal

  • Empowering self-management through online education for MSK conditions
  • Supporting rheumatology patients in the community through remote monitoring
  • Web-based exercise prescription to support self-management
  • Using decision support tools to self-manage low back pain
  • Going paperless to support patients to self-manage MSK conditions
  • Tracking patient progress through the remote capture of patient reported outcome and experience Measures
  • Video-based exercise rehabilitation and physiotherapy-led group exercise classes
  • Supporting people with MSK conditions to live well within the community
  • Integrating voluntary, community and social prescribing resources into digital self-management for common musculoskeletal conditions

Perioperative winners

  • 4 site test, evaluate and scale approach for four digital innovations in High volume low complexity pathways
  • Waiting well, AI triaged health coaching
  • Developing and scaling digital perioperative capabilities in an existing technology platform.
  • Digital preoperative assessment, patient education and two way communication within an existing ICS shared system
  • Digital preoperative assessment and consent for High Volume Low Complexity pathways
  • Digital redesign of preoperative pathways

Cardiology and cardiac surgery elective care

  • London Cardiac Networks
  • Cheshire and Merseyside Cardiac Network

For more information on each programme, please visit the NHSX website here.

In a blog post published on the NHSX website, Lisa Hollins, Director of Innovation Delivery, NHSX, said: “NHS and care services have been using digital technology in new ways to find creative solutions to the pressures, backlogs and waiting lists created by the COVID pandemic. Virtual wards have enabled people to recover at home with remote clinical supervision, creating inpatient capacity for those that need to stay in hospital. Digital and video based tools are already helping to ensure any post-op rehab programme and exercises are completed correctly and that the rehab plan is clear ahead of the day of surgery.

“Building on these sorts of innovations will play a key part in the restoration and sustainability of services. Digital transformation is also driving entirely new care pathways that are better for patients and that save time for clinical and administrative teams.”

The blog post also set out its expectations over the next three years, where it expects:

  • All high volume specialties will have agreed an established digital pathway offering choice for patients and making sure that clinicians are able to concentrate time with those patients with more complex conditions
  • There will be support for patients to monitor their long-term condition at home, with access to guidance to support self-care
  • The most complex long term conditions will be monitored using digital platforms
  • There are effective flows of data between clinical systems, supported by technical standards, to make sure that clinical teams have the data to make decisions along the clinical pathway.