NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group has awarded a contract to Docobo to support the delivery of telehealth at scale.
The service uses a combination of education, remote monitoring, automated alerting rules, plus access to experienced nurses to support people living with lung conditions, heart failure or diabetes. With the new Docobo platform, the CCG intends to scale this up to 4-5,000 patients a year, and use the system to support new clinical pathways and conditions.
Carol Hughes, the clinical and operational lead for health technology at Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust, said: “Liverpool has been a trailblazer for delivering telehealth at scale and has produced some great improvements in our local patient outcomes and wellbeing. However, this is something that we now want to see used for the benefit of all patients, across the wider local health economy. It is embedded into the local health economy, and now is the time to grow. This is a really exciting time.”
Dave Horsfield, NHS Liverpool CCG’s digital care and innovation lead, said “We’ve shown that a high level of professional telehealth support gives reassurance to people and produces good results, but we wanted to stretch the technical capability to open up other options. For example, when people came off the previous programme, we couldn’t offer a step down option that would enable them to use their own smart device to continue to access self-help advice.”
Docobo was set up in 2001 and has developed the Doc@Home solution to securely collect, analyse and display patient data. Patients can be given a small recording device, CarePortal, that was designed with Age UK to be easy to use. With support and training, they can use the CarePortal to enter information into the Doc@Home portal.
Patients who are more comfortable using technology can use their own devices to record information. Clinicians simply use a browser to securely access the information displayed on Doc@Home.
The CCG has set the maximum potential value of the contract at £11.5 million, if it extends from three to five years, in recognition of the range of patients and pathways that may justify further investment.
