In our Interview Series this week, we spoke with Bryn Sage, the chief executive from Inhealthcare, the specialists in digital health and remote patient monitoring. We asked Bryn as few questions:
Could you tell me a bit about yourself and your organisation?
I’m Bryn Sage, the Yorkshire-born chief executive of Inhealthcare. I started my career as an apprentice computer engineer in 1981 and have served as a director of our parent company Intechnology plc since 1994.
At Inhealthcare, we help the NHS digitise care pathways. We work with clinicians and patients to co-design services. We have demonstrated in a number of evaluation exercises that these services improve care quality and outcomes. They also reduce unnecessary face-to-face appointments and the associated financial and environmental costs of travel.
Our digital health services contribute to a fuller picture of the patient, which can also cut the cost of prescriptions.
To date, we have rolled out more than 50 services in partnership with NHS organisations across the UK. These increase capacity in the health service and help clinicians to spend more of their time with patients who need care the most.
What is the most significant achievement for your organisation in the past 12 months and what will be over the next 12 months?
In the past 12 months, Inhealthcare has announced two major contracts: we launched our first services in London and agreed a three-year deal with Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on behalf of six NHS organisations in the North East.
In the North East, the milestone agreement gives clinicians access to a library of more than 50 digital health services and Inhealthcare’s toolkit to design, build and deploy their own across a population area of more than three million people.
In London, we have a landmark agreement with the North West London Collaboration of Clinical Commissioning Groups to roll out the next generation of digital technologies that will make it easier for Londoners to access health and care services at a fraction of the cost.
Both contracts are significant as they allow for the spread of proven innovations across traditional health and care boundaries.
In the next 12 months, we are in discussions with a number of NHS organisations elsewhere in the UK which are looking to replicate what we have done in London and the North East. These discussions will create opportunities for better care and increased capacity within the NHS and will enable our continued growth.
We are heartened by the launch of NHSX and its apparent approach to technology, which seems to be “build once and share many times”. This is exactly what we have been doing in recent years.
What problems and challenges are there to overcome?
In procurement, budget cycles tend to be 12-24 months. As a cloud-based software provider, it can make the commercial model difficult. You need to have an engaged and forward-looking customer who is willing to grasp the benefits of proven innovation. We are encouraged that the NHS leadership seems to be acknowledging this constraint on innovation and hope the Treasury takes note, given the enormous underlying growth potential of UK health tech and wider life sciences sector. We see our three-year deal in the North East as a sign that things are changing for the better.
What is the biggest technology challenge to overcome?
Experience tells us that service transformation is about people, rather than technology. The best way we have found to overcome this issue is to make sure there is a genuinely collaborative approach to each and every NHS project. To be successful you need to ensure that all of your stakeholders are involved at every step of the way, from service design to implementation.
We felt inspired at some recent feedback from a patient in Manchester, a retired public sector manager called Kathryn McDougall, 70, who said our self-testing service is convenient, flexible and allows her to go on holiday. She added: “I have the scope to check my own health and I have grown in confidence in my use of technology. This would have been great during my working life.” To us, that is a great message.
What advice would you give to other organisations of professionals?
I would urge start-ups in the health tech space to make sure they have right business model to engage with the way funding flows around the NHS. Healthcare finance is not easy to understand but essential for successful commissioning. Fundamentally, is someone willing to pay for your product and if so, how much? We have seen many great ideas fall by the wayside through being unable to answer this question.
That aside, we are strong supporters of the AHSN Network and have formed strong alliances with a number of innovation agencies across the UK. We have found them to be very helpful and effective ways into healthcare systems.
What is next in your space?
There is a lot of excitement around voice-activated computing. This technology can help deliver applications from medication reminders to emergency alerts. Imagine if Alexa could call an ambulance if a resident suffers a heart attack at home. The challenge lies in the information governance. In other words, how much privacy are we prepared to give up in exchange for improvements in health and social care? We have been using voice computing for a number of years and see it as a vital way of bringing the benefits of digital health to people who aren’t digital natives. Automated telephony via landline can be a very effective means of communications for elderly people, who tell us they find it much more accessible than a smartphone or desktop.
What are you working on at the moment?
We have been working with the global medical technology company Smith & Nephew on a new digital wound care service for community nurses. The service is designed to reduce variation in care – a big issue in wound management – and enables nurses to complete wound assessment forms remotely in the field. We expect the service to deliver significant improvements in outcomes by healing more wounds more quickly and reducing dressing costs and nurse time. It’s been a great experience working with Smith & Nephew and we look forward to the service rolling out more widely. Watch this space, as they say in newspapers!
Bryn Sage is chief executive of Inhealthcare. For more information about the company, please visit www.inhealthcare.co.uk
