Here we take a look at all of the entries for the Health Tech Awards 2023 category of ‘Partnership of the Year’.
Inhealthcare Limited with the NHS and Scottish Government
Overview: Inhealthcare has partnered with the NHS and Scottish Government to develop and expand a range of remote monitoring pathways to help patients safely self-manage their health needs at home.
Why? Every year, more than one million GP appointments take place across Scotland to measure blood pressure, increasing demand on already-stretched services.
What happened? Working in partnership with the NHS and Scottish Government, Inhealthcare has developed and expanded a wide range of national pathways for long-term conditions including asthma, chronic obstruc-tive pulmonary disease, heart failure and hypertension. So far, 15,000 patients have benefited from the updated pathways, including 7,500 patients for blood pressure monitoring. The Connect Me programme is provided free to the public via mobile app, website, text message or automated phone call, promoting digital inclusion for those without smartphones or broadband at home. It is being used to monitor the effects of starting or stopping treatments, issue reminders or encouragement, spot flare-ups so treatment can be delivered sooner, identify reasons why a condition might not be well controlled and offer advice and support during treatment plans. Notably, the pathway reduced health inequalities with more than twice as many people from disadvantaged areas using the system than those from affluent areas. Inhealthcare and the TEC team have weekly, monthly and quarterly catch-ups. Each pathway integrates with the SCI Store and Docman hospital and GP systems. Since the pandemic, 23 pathways have been developed which has been a remarkable achievement. The team have worked hard to engage with stakeholders across the health boards to ensure understanding and buy-in at every step.
Looking ahead. The TEC team has access to the Inhealthcare Toolkit, meaning new services can be built in-house. The Toolkit includes components that can be reused, meaning development, testing and deployment of pathways can be achieved at speed.
Alvie Health and ESNEFT
Overview: The ESNEFT-Alvie partnership is the first human+digital model of scalable personalised care for cancer patients in the NHS.
Why? One in two people diagnosed with cancer will not start or complete cancer treatment due to poor health or complications. An affordable prehabilitation solution could help reduce these complications for cancer patients.
What happened? ESNEFT and Alvie co-created the first hybrid digital plus local service in the NHS, with an AI-driven 3600 health profile and risk-stratification algorithm/dashboard stratifying patients to different levels of support. High-risk patients are sign-posted to hospital-based specialist AHPs, with low-moderate risk groups receiving technology-enabled guidance and support. Seamless referrals to Alvie are made through a simple online referral portal. Contrary to published research, where step count deteriorates by 15 percent in chemo patients; weekly step count increased from 19,000 steps to 40,000 steps in the first two weeks and plateaued. Distress and anxiety measured on the validated emotional distress scale fell significantly and contrary to published research where quality of life falls by 11 percent in patients on chemotherapy, patient EQ5D5L health utility improved by percent and EQ-Visual analogue scale by 17 percent. Median post-op hospital stay in colorectal patients is 5 days – one day less than the national average – and cost savings were calculated at £971 per patient, delivering an ROI to ESNEFT of 320 percent.
Looking ahead. The Alvie-ESNEFT partnership provides a blueprint for improving access to personalised care across the NHS. Alvie is replicating the ESNEFT model, to become the digital solution for patient choice and equitable access.
Better and Hereford and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS FT
Overview: Implementing the Better Meds EPMA project in a record 2.5 months.
Why? The partnership enabled the incredibly rapid implementation within the Trust, which is of significance due to the risks associated with operating a dual digital and paper system.
What happened? The Better Meds EPMA was implemented in a record 2.5 months, despite an earlier, unrelated, setback due to a significant EPR and PAS outage. H&W and Better identified a pilot ward – a small six-bed ward that provided specialised end-of-life care. This allowed rigorous testing of the prescribing regimes and software capabilities. The project expanded to a 28-bed rehabilitation ward, catering to a different set of requirements and providing further opportunities for testing. The collaborative nature of the project was evident throughout training and staff engagement. A core team of “super-users” were trained, with Better staff visible on site to provide support. Engagement sessions and “roadshows” were held prior to implementation, allowing staff to raise queries and understand the impact of the roll-out. Comprehensive mandatory online training was then provided to all staff members, resulting in a 90 percent completion rate and face-to-face drop-in sessions were arranged to address any questions. The combined effect of having behind-the-scenes support and visible presence meant that all staff felt confident in the new EPMA and could see the benefits it held. Following this, and due to the high level of engagement from staff, the trust decided to expedite the phased roll-out to include all seven community hospitals and mental health facilities.
Looking ahead. The successful practices that enabled the collaborative working during this partnership, and the implementation model that has been used, can act as a blueprint for other trusts.
Sunderland GP Alliance and Iatro
Overview: Sunderland GP Alliance (SGPA) and Iatro aim to improve digital access to primary care services in Sunderland by creating a digital Front Door to reduce GP and administrative workload, promote self-care, and standardise website quality to reduce inequalities in patient experience.
Why? Consultations with a range of stakeholders including GP’s, patients, practice managers and social prescribers, revealed that GP practice websites were inconsistent and of poor quality with low accessibility, which resulted in limited adoption of digital tools by patients.
What happened? The success of the project was measured through monitoring website traffic, adoption of digital tools, standardisation of practice websites, and reduction of disparities in patient experience. The second key stream of the project was to uplift the GP practices in Sunderland to a new website platform that would ensure consistency and high-quality accessibility across all practices in the region. To ensure a seamless transition for the GP practice websites, the project was split into four phases and involved all 38 practices across Sunderland. The practices were moved over to Iatro’s Practice 365 website platform over a period of six months, with completion in February 2023. The website provides information on a range of services, including social prescribing and self-care options, and allows patients to access their own health data, promoting digital tools such as online appointments and medical record access through the NHS App, via a secure and easy-to-use platform. The project has already provided patients with better quality websites, increased access to digital services, and raised awareness and referrals to other services such as social prescribing and self-care options. A website audit was completed to gauge the accessibility of the practice websites before and after the Practice365 solution was installed. Prior to the new installations, nine different website providers were used across the region, and only 16 percent were compliant with modern accessibility guidelines. After the new websites were implemented, all websites achieved 100 percent accessibility compliance. Since migrating to the new GP practice website platform, 375 self-referrals for social prescribing have been completed through the new digitised form in websites.
Looking ahead. Learning and outcomes are being shared with NHS England transformation team as part of national research, and the project team is working on scaling up the project to improve access to digital primary care services across the wider region.
Ensono (Submitted by Resonance)
Overview: A web app from King’s College London, King’s College Hospital and Ensono brings together groundbreaking tools to help paramedics and doctors effectively triage patients who suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital.
Why? In the UK, statistics indicate that the probability of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is approximately 10 percent. In comparison, this rate is as high as 20 percent in other countries such as Denmark.
What happened? Dr Pareek conducted a research programme which resulted in the MIRACLE2 algorithm, which gives a neurological risk score to assess the risk of brain damage following an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The algorithm needed a platform for delivery, which presented a perfect opportunity for incorporation into an app. The Ensono team worked with academics from King’s College London to turn the initiative into an effective prototype. It enables the early classification of patients admitted to the hospital with a successfully resuscitated cardiac arrest and incorporates seven variables predicting poor neurological outcomes at six months. Two further tools have been added to the application, further bolstering the capacity for clinicians to diagnose and personalise treatment to match patients’ individual needs. Firstly, the SCAI Grade measures the cardiogenic shock severity in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. It classifies cardiogenic shock into one of five classes based on severity, helping clinicians make crucial decisions on how to proceed with treatment. Secondly, the KOCAR Culprit tool calculates the probability of a culprit coronary lesion after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Looking ahead. The app is now being advanced in its development to progress towards use in clinical settings, and there are plans to affiliate this with the British Cardiovascular Interventional Society.
Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and Healthy.io
Overview: Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) in partnership with Healthy.io have been on a journey to improve outcomes for patients requiring wound management in community care.
Why? Variation in current care has led to a 71 percent increase in the annual prevalence of wounds at a cost of £8.3bn. 80 percent of wound care is managed within the community and there is a rising demand for services.
What happened? The pilot with Minuteful for Wound (MfW) offers a solution of digital wound registry, providing caseload oversight for patients living with chronic wounds. Using AI and machine learning to support clinicians, MfW calculates consistent wound measurements, simplifies quality documentation with evidence based clinical assessment flows, and provides a remote monitoring caseload review platform. Benefits so far have included increased caseload and treatment gap visibility, with new assessment flows providing detailed clinical data. MfW enables clinicians to show patients the trajectory and status of their wound. Feedback from patients is that this really helps them to see what is happening with the healing progress for their wound. CPFT wished to provide evidence to purchase 12 Wound Express pumps; traditionally this would have required a manual trawl of current records. The MfW web-based portal (visualisation tool to support reviewing a wound caseload) enabled a quick search for a nine-week time period for all of the patients seen by our community nurses with a venous leg ulcer (125 patients). The MfW audit of 125 leg ulcer patients was completed within six minutes. The manual audit took approx 30 minutes per patient for 125 patients totalling 62 hours. And finally, annual savings of £309,448 in targeted treatment optimisation are anticipated.
Looking ahead. CPFT hope to continue to use the solution to provide benefits for patients requiring wound management in community care.
