For HTN’s latest interview, we spoke with Julian Coe, managing director at X-on Health, to discuss the future of the digital front door in primary care, including what good looks like, the importance of the user experience and approaches to improving primary care. We discussed complicated vs complex in primary care, how best to serve people in a way they want to be served, and how to support primary care with change in the future.

To start us off, Julian provided his own definition of a digital front door as “a way that delivers a good patient experience and helps the surgery manage the demand they’re facing with the capacity they’ve got”, while adding that an advanced cloud-based telephony system “should absolutely be part of the digital front door”.

Complicated vs complex in primary care  

Julian then went on to highlight one of X-on Health’s key messages, which concentrates on drawing a distinction between the complicated and the complex when it comes to primary care. He explained that primary care is “complicated in that there’s a lot of demand and there’s a lot of parts to put together, but actually it’s not complex,” going on to state how “complex systems bring lots of unknowns”.

He expressed that the goal of all tech providers should be to make things easier, with a focus on “helping you get the answer you want first time as quickly as possible,” adding that solutions should also be “omni-channel with everything you want to know being accessible via your smartphone, if that is your preferred channel”.

Tackling the challenges of digital in primary care 

In order to tackle some of the more complicated aspects of digital in primary care, Julian noted how important it is to “serve people in the way they want to be served,” which to him means “automating all the different elements” and then taking the “simple steps of linking up all the automations to make the system work.”

However, he also recognised the extent of this undertaking, highlighting that in order “to improve the patient experience and improve access to primary care, you’ve got to help 6,400 surgeries in England.” But with a surprising number of these surgeries “only just removing fax lines,” Julian noted that “giving them a choice of 25 to 30 telephony providers, online consultation providers and website providers and then telling them to link it up to the NHS” just makes things more complicated, especially from the practice manager point of view. “You can introduce the fanciest bit of AI,” Julian added, “but it’s not going to be able to answer a question or do what you want unless you have someone there to hook it up and make it work.”

He went on to use X-on Health’s telephony system as an example, explaining, “we’ve got our telephony system in 3,600 surgeries and not many of them use it to the fullest extent. And that’s the same with any software system.” To address this challenge, Julian highlighted the team’s new “managed service ethos” in which they spend more time with each surgery “to take them through making simple changes in their telephony system”. This includes helping the surgery to switch on the features they need and understand how to “make use of it all”. 

Julian also outlined their three-pronged approach to delivering new systems, which includes bringing together technology, expertise and data to better “affect change” within these surgeries. 

Tudor Lodge case study 

To demonstrate the success of X-on Health’s approach, Julian used the example of their award-winning case study at Tudor Lodge Health Centre, where they performed a full audit looking at “how access was working for them”. This included reviewing the centre’s telephony data, their online consultation data and NHS app usage.

“We did a very large patient survey in multiple languages so people could answer in their own native tongue,” Julian explained, with the results showing “53% of the patient population who responded to the survey having never used the online booking solution”. In response to this, X-on Health looked at simple fixes to help improve the service, including the introduction of their chatbot and a dashboard that shows the flow of data, while also “providing them with a managed service” which focused on linking everything together.

The future of primary care and the digital front door 

Julian then outlined how X-on Health’s new approach and ethos fits in with the future of primary care over the next three years. He emphasised the need for guidance when it comes to implementing new tools and software, highlighting the fact that “there’s lots of tech that can change the world, but our strongest message overall is about deploying it”. Julian added that “self-learning is nowhere near as simple as being given a hand” and that there should be a particular focus on “helping the practice manager”. 

Julian then went on to speak about the importance of consolidating tech to “make it easier” for surgeries and practitioners to use these tools. Using the NHS App as an example, he said, “the drive to the NHS App is totally valid and it has all that fantastic functionality, but unless it speaks to you on an individual level and unless your surgery is using it to refer you to the right local services, you’re probably not going to use it”. He then emphasised the importance of using solutions that work “down on the ground. Otherwise, it’s just another bit of tech that’s procured centrally and does nothing.”

Julian also spoke about the introduction of AI voice agents as part of the digital front door, stating that “at the moment, you can ring up and speak to one of these voice agents in multiple languages and it will understand what you’re asking, but unless you’ve connected it to the patient management system, it has no idea what appointments to give you.” This linked back to his focus on consolidating systems, but also allowed him to emphasise the potential for this type of tech, especially when it comes to personalisation. He explained how “the ability to personalise is moving very rapidly, so we will have the perfect receptionist for you shortly,” referencing X-on Health’s plans to introduce their own voice agent as part of their offering. 

Building the case for change 

With all these challenges and ideas in mind, we spoke about how to implement the necessary changes within primary care and what the case for change would look like, with Julian stating that “there’s absolutely zero case for the current status”.

He expanded on this by using online shopping as a comparison to healthcare services, explaining that with online shopping we get “minute-by-minute tracking of where the van is and when the delivery is coming”, but we don’t get the same service when it comes to the more “important experience” with a GP. 

When considering how to address this, Julian explained that ultimately, “it’s not really a tech issue. It’s about how we use the tech to help the GPs provide the service to the patient.” From his perspective, Julian noted how “we should make the tools available to GPs to make it easier for them to provide that level of customer experience” and ease the burden when they’re already “tasked with managing their own business, managing complicated workflows and being fantastic clinical providers.”

Adding to this, Julian also highlighted that “one of the really important facets of improving patient access is that we return to healthcare professionals having more time to provide care and to achieve a more proactive healthcare model rather than a reactive one”. He emphasised how tech should help clinicians focus on “doing what they’re there to do rather than being workflow models”, which she said is “a real core facet of what we’re trying to achieve” at X-on Health. 

Key considerations for the future 

Julian’s final comments focused on the key considerations that should be taken into account for the future of primary care and the digital front door. He suggested that “people have got to start buying solutions and not individual point systems” which require them to “try and put it all together”. However, he also added that this should be beholden to the powers of the NHS who should only “procure solutions that deliver outcomes” and “make the tech providers responsible for delivering those outcomes rather than selling them.”

He emphasised the importance of digital for the future of primary care, stating, “I don’t want to underplay what technology can do,” but also added that their main focus will be on “trying to simplify and consolidate all these tools” in order to make things easier for the surgeries using it. Julian ended our discussion by reiterating the fact that introducing new tech systems is no good “unless you do the hard yards down on the ground and link everything up.” 

We’d like to thank Julian for taking the time to talk to us and provide their expert insights on this topic.

By Aimee Wilde, Partnerships Lead, Accurx

Nurses are the backbone of our NHS. Over 750,000 nurses are registered with the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC), making nursing the largest clinical workforce in the UK. For patients and their families, nurses are often their primary point of interaction with the health service, providing essential care and support during critical times. We all have stories – whether from our own experiences or those of our loved ones – where a nurse’s kindness and unwavering support has made the daunting prospect of recovery seem possible.

Many nurses enter the profession because they’re driven to provide deep care for others. Considering this, it tracks that one of the elements of their work that nurses report getting the deepest sense of enjoyment and satisfaction from is providing direct care to patients. In challenge to this, many nurses now face a heavy administrative workload that reduces the time and energy they can dedicate to clinical, patient-facing tasks. Non-clinical work for nurses has been growing steadily in recent years and although it’s too early to determine the definitive impact, the recent mandate for ICSs to cut their workforce by 50% could exacerbate things further.

The impact of this administrative burden on nurses is significant. It detracts from their ability to deliver patient care, creates potential issues around patient safety, and contributes to low morale and burnout. At Accurx, we regularly work with frontline nurses that echo a similar outlook and share murmurings about potentially wanting to leave their jobs. And the scale of this challenge is huge. According to RCN data, over 40% of  nurses are contemplating leaving their nursing careers.

To stem this potential exodus of brilliant nurses, we must find ways to drastically reduce the time nurses spend on non-clinical tasks. Dawn Dowding, Co-Chair of the Digital Nursing Forum at RCN rightly notes “the NHS can’t afford to lose anymore nurses… and it is time that we implemented digital systems that help nurses work more efficiently”. So what can be done from a digital perspective to support nurses today? Below are three practical use cases where nurses are already using technology to empower themselves, improve productivity and ultimately treat more patients.

Nurse-led helplines: digital triage

Nursing teams in many acute specialities run service helplines, which are often the only way for patients to connect with secondary care teams. The patient demand for support via these helplines can easily become overwhelming for nursing teams that are usually already understaffed. Having to deal with such a high volume of patient requests via this medium can delay nurses from visiting in-patients and attending important MDT meetings. In attempts to mitigate this, many service  helplines are only open for a set time during the morning and do not have a voicemail capability. Whilst this might help nursing teams better manage their capacity, it creates a very frustrating experience for patients – who may spend many hours on the phone trying to connect with a nursing team to no avail.

Digital patient triage offers an alternative to this. This is where patients are sent a web link to a simple, digital form where they can submit requests for support. Admin & nursing teams can review, triage and respond to requests from a single inbox, enabling patient requests to be resolved and actioned without a phone call; saving nurses significant time. This has been the case for the IBD nursing team at UHL, who introduced the use of digital patient triage in 2024. They’ve seen over a 60% increase in patient interactions that they’re able to support year on year (compared to previously only having the helpline available). They’ve also been able to help resolve 170 flare ups per month, representing an 80% increase in flares treated and also A&E admissions avoided.

Other nursing teams at UHL (including the Urology service) are also beginning to adopt this approach. Aimee Winfield, Urology Lead CNS, highlights the benefits: “Phone lines were the bane of my life… [Now] if I have 5 messages via the digital form, I’ll have a quick flick through and see who needs to be called first. Often, I don’t even need to call back and can simply reply to the patient with a text message.” Given this feedback, we urge CNIOs, Chief Nurses and Lead Digital Nurses to employ this approach and see firsthand the transformative impact it can have in empowering frontline nurses and improving productivity.

Reduce administrative tasks for nurses in clinics

In many healthcare interactions, detailed information needs to be collected from patients to determine the most appropriate, safe, and effective treatment options available. Traditionally in secondary care, this responsibility falls to nurses during clinic appointments. This can be challenging as nurses may spend a lot of time waiting for patients to recall information which rushes them to provide responses, or they have to chase incomplete information later because patients lack relevant family history or medication information.

Digital tools can empower nurses by enabling them to send patients digital questionnaires ahead of clinics. This approach has been introduced at UHCW’s Surgical Options Clinic. Previously, patients completed a health questionnaire in-clinic with nurse support. The clinic took several hours and accommodated 10 patients. Now, patients receive a digital questionnaire via Accurx, allowing them to complete it in private, at their own pace, and with medications to hand. The clinic’s capacity has doubled to 20 patients per session. Patient experience has improved, and nurses spend significantly less time on admin during the clinic and trying to contact patients to collect outstanding information.

Empower nursing teams to communicate across care settings

Patient pathways often span multiple healthcare providers, requiring Clinical Nurse Specialists to communicate with primary care colleagues. Nurses may need to share and discuss onward care plans, wound care plans, medication changes and general queries about their patients.  Conventionally, communication like this across the care divide is via phone or email. But nurses can spend hours trying to get through to GP practices on the phone or spend significant time waiting for and chasing email replies.

The Heart Failure Nursing team at George Eliot Hospital experienced these challenges firsthand. They previously spent 30 minutes per patient informing GP practices of medication changes. Now, they use our digital Message GP product to send prescription changes directly to GPs, reducing the time to 5 minutes per patient. This change saves the team over four weeks of working time per year.

The road ahead

Straightforward, proven, and easy-to-use digital tools like the ones discussed can make a tangible impact on reducing the administrative load for nurses. More importantly, these tools have the potential to improve nurses’ day-to-day, prevent burnout and boost morale. By embracing these methods, we can help nurses get back to what they love and excel at -caring for patients– and ensure they remain motivated in their vital, frontline roles.

If you work in nursing and think Accurx can help, email partnerships@accurx.com

For HTN’s latest feature series, we focus in on digital clinical and administrative systems, sharing practical use cases and examples supporting productivity.

Here, we explore Restore Information Management’s Auto-Ordering System, utilised by NHS organisations to support automation when ordering and managing patient records, files and notes. We share examples of the system in use, as well as how it supports increased standardisation and centrally controlled processes.

Andrew Robertshaw, implementation manager at Restore Information Management, highlighted that “the system takes the need away for hospitals to have to manually request records from us”. He added: “We make sure we deliver the right record, at the right time, to the right place for patient appointments. Not only that, but if someone is placing an order manually, they may only consider their area or their clinic, and not consider an appointment happening beforehand. Our system can, however, handle all of that – it’s about making sure that the record is there when the patient’s being seen.”

Another major benefit is the space saved within the hospital, Andrew went on, as “space within a hospital is at a premium, and we’re all struggling with that”. Having large areas dedicated to records “isn’t always a good use” of the space that is available, he said, “so we can take those records in and manage them on the hospital’s behalf”. This frees up space to be redeveloped or repurposed to support patient care, Andrew told us, “sometimes that might be for outpatient wards, or even commercial spaces like a coffee lounge”.

Transforming the management of 350k medical records in West Hertfordshire 

With around 350,000 medical records held within 28,000 boxes across two different sites, West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust found themselves facing multiple challenges, including insufficient storage, inefficient location of files and “high volumes of unstructured data”.

As such, the trust turned to Restore Information Management and has since been working with them for over 10 years now. An agreement was made that “managing and storing the records off-site was a quick and cost-effective way to create the required clinical space”, while also freeing up staff to place their efforts elsewhere, such as supporting the implementation of a new EPR system.

A 12-week project with Restore Information Management ensured all records were transferred successfully for availability within 24 hours, giving staff the ability to order files for next-day delivery. This led to monthly retrieval requests reaching “22,700 across the trust’s three hospital sites” with Restore Informatin Management responding to this demand through a “dedicated transport solution” for the trust. A “unique software interface” was also developed to allow for better flexibility when meeting the trust’s ordering needs.

View this case study in more detail.

Benefits of Restore Information’s auto-ordering solution

Andrew shared with us how Restore Information Management’s customers have utilised the time saved, including “looking at other aspects of health records and their digital journey”. Hospitals are “always looking at how they can reduce the amount of paper in their organisation”, he said, “and this works really well for that, because it supports their change in process needed to stop using paper”.

“The process lends itself to increased standardisation and centrally controlled processes. Whereas if you have maybe 20 people working in a medical records department all requesting notes manually, it’s very difficult to control when they request notes, how they request notes, and who they request notes for”. Where the system helps overcome this, he went on, “is that it takes away from that individual person having to make those decisions – that’s all controlled centrally by a management team at the hospital”.

That “massively standardises the delivery of records”, Andrew told us, “ultimately reducing costs to the organisation, and also making sure that the right patient is seen with the right notes, at the right time, which comes back to that patient care piece”.

The clinic prep of records “can also really help get them ready for scanning”, Andrew said, “because as part of the preparation process we have a really tight control on what is acceptable for a medical record, including condition, structure, and size. In a busy medical records department, time constraints might prevent that kind of control or oversight, but we can make sure the notes don’t get too thick, and then if they want to go down the scanning route it’s already organised with only the most relevant paperwork for scanning.”

When it comes to implementation, Andrew highlights the efficiency of the process, talking about recent development work focusing on making the process quick to roll-out. “This is our own software we’ve developed,” he said, “so whereas before we had to create a new system for every hospital, now, with our expertise of working with lots of different hospitals, we’ve come up with a standard message format that will actually work for all hospitals, and then a shared system on top of that, so adding a new customer into this now is really quite quick and easy”.

If you’re interested in learning more about Restore Information Management and their automatic record ordering, please click here.

By the HPCC 2025 team

The response to HPCC25 has been amazing. We’ve heard from hundreds of patients, clinicians, NHS trusts, NHS executives, patient organisations, researchers, industry leaders, and digital health innovators who want to get involved, and we couldn’t be more fired up to deliver HPCC25.

Get ready for May 9th, 2025. I’m thrilled to share that we are geared to deliver another year of the largest patient and carer congress in Europe. HPCC25 promises to be bigger, more exciting, and packed with thought provoking content and patient-centred innovation.

Over the past 12 months, AI for clinical decision making, wearables, patient support programmes (PSPs), accelerated trials, and ePROs have been significant themes for patients, clinical colleagues, and industry partners.

Our NHS partners have also been heavily focused on leveraging AI to increase capacity within the community, allowing more patients to be supported in the comfort of their own homes. The event will focus on shaping the impact of innovations like this across the NHS, with our clinical advisory board members and attendees representing over 60% of Trusts across the country, including University College London Hospitals, Guy’s and St Thomas’, Oxford University Hospitals, Royal Free London, Cambridge University Hospitals, King’s College Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Barts Health, and more leaders nationally.

We are just weeks away from releasing the final agenda, which promises to deliver amazing content for all attendees and partners on the day. So, here is HPCC25 by the numbers:

Over 2,000+ patients, 200 clinicians, and 100 NHS partners. The event is supported by 10 industry partners and features 10 thought leadership speakers. Additionally, 20 patient organisations actively participate, making HPCC a comprehensive and collaborative forum for people living with blood cancers and disorders.

HPCC is a comprehensive and collaborative forum for people living with blood cancers and disorders.

The event is free for patients, carers, the NHS, and patient organisations. Register here.

For commercial partners interested in sponsoring the event, please reach out to partnerships@saniushealth.com If you’d like to purchase a day pass, you can also contact us at the same email.

For content creators and media enquiries, please reach out to partnerships@saniushealth.com

Helena Brown, Interim Head of Customer Success, Accurx

For a long time now, many GP practices have been overwhelmed with patient demand. But what we hear and see from our GP community is that much of this demand could be better managed in a different setting, or even entirely self-managed by the patient.

So why isn’t it? Perhaps the more existential reason is that from a young age, it’s been ingrained in us to ‘call for a GP appointment’. Another reason is that the system has always placed GP practices as the first point of contact for patients, even though they end up spending a lot of time diverting requests that could be better managed elsewhere.

Over the years, this has led to:

• Poor patient access to general practice – GP or PCN appointment waiting times can be over six weeks, and patients often experience the ‘8am rush’ when seeking care.
• Poor patient access to alternate services – it is hard for patients to know what services are available to them and how to get in touch. We recently surveyed 214 practices and the second biggest factor that slows GP practices down with their triage process is having to signpost patients away from the GP to alternate services.
• Poor efficiency – patients end up being seen in more expensive and capacity-constrained settings, and there is significant duplication as they bounce around the system.

But we know there is a better way. Over the past few years, there has been constant innovation and commissioning of alternative and more appropriate channels to direct patients to. This ranges from NHS.UK self-help content and self-refer physio services, to Pharmacy First and out-of-hours GP services. Now we need to put these channels to better use, through creating a single ‘digital front door’ that directs patients to the most appropriate setting first time, instead of using primary care’s limited resources to redirect them when their care isn’t best managed there. In this article, I’ll explore what that could look like.

A digital front door

We believe that the future of digital in primary care is in a single ‘digital front door’ that directs patients to the most appropriate setting, first time. The front door allows the patient to see and get in touch with both primary and secondary care services in their area from one single place, so patients are treated in the right place, with the right person, in time.

For example, if a patient presents with a sore throat or sinusitis, the digital front door could pick up that these are Pharmacy First conditions, and make them aware that they can be treated in their local pharmacy. Of course, showing all options for care would not be appropriate for every patient. The NHS Spine integration would recognise specific cohorts of patients who could be directed immediately to any existing team they were under, e.g. complex care coordination.

A digital front door would reduce demand on GP practices, decrease duplication of patient requests across NHS services and increase the speed at which patients get the right care.

At Accurx, we believe the digital front door we’re building could eventually divert up to 40 percent of requests away, before they ever reach the GP practice.

What to think about when implementing a digital front door

Consider first where a ‘digital front door’ can have the greatest impact, fastest. For example, with a record 3.8million people treated in 2023 by NHS Mental Health Services, and a large proportion of these being for mild to moderate conditions, the digital front door could play a huge role in signposting to IAPT self-referral options locally. We’d recommend connecting with your local IAPT services or pharmacies as part of Pharmacy First to explain the change and how this could affect patient flow. In the case of Pharmacy First, the front door could be a huge incentive to get their completed consultation payment.

Then there’s preparing patients for the change. We’ve come a long way since the pandemic in delivering and accessing care digitally and we know involving patients is integral to any digital change management. Your Patient Participation Group will have some ideas on how to make the transition to a digital front door seamless. Consider starting out by sharing the link to the front door with patients who you know are digital champions and familiar with online consultation. If it doesn’t work for them, it won’t work for the rest of your patients. Then consider what resources might you need to help other patients get on board, and how your admin team can begin preparing patients in their regular touchpoints for the change.

Your local patient population is unique, and their needs will affect what services have been commissioned in your area and therefore what is available to them in the digital front door. By knowing these services, and mapping out which ones you want the digital front door to signpost to, you’ll be able to hit the ground running.

Interested?

If you’re interested in up to 40 percent fewer requests coming to your practice, or the practices in your ICB, whilst improving productivity, access and staff experience, we’re currently recruiting for a front door pilot. Get in touch with customer.success@accurx.com and we’ll add you to our waitlist.

For a recent interview, we caught up with Joe Waller, director at Aire Logic, to chat about the company’s “tech for good” approach to deploying software solutions, enterprise architecture, strategy, and product development solutions. Joe also shared with us some of the key factors in deciding and directing Aire Logic’s employee-owned and low-hierarchy structure, including its role in helping drive innovation and support collective decision making.

“We’ve been working in health and care for fifteen years,” Joe told us, “and that’s included work with trusts, as well as work at a national NHS level, where we’ve been involved in building a lot of the national NHS systems. We have expanded outside of health and care more recently, but we’ve remained very clearly a tech-for-good driven company – which essentially means we only work on projects that deliver social value.”

Other parts of Aire Logic’s portfolio include working on IT strategies for hospitals, or even for countries, Joe shared, “looking at the next 5-10 years, and often picking up those projects and building the systems that will create those visions”. Ultimately, there’s a strong focus on those working at the coalface in health and care, he went on, “whether that’s nurses, doctors, IT staff, or administrative staff”.

In terms of available services, Aire Logic’s work spans across Agile and DevOps, helping healthcare organisations to deliver digital transformation more rapidly; enterprise architecture, helping resolve challenges relating to existing technologies; and product development, through sister company Aire Innovate. In practice, solutions range from the design of simple forms to help increase efficiency in specific areas of service, to supporting the development of complex clinical pathways.

How Aire Logic’s low-hierarchy approach is helping boost innovation in health and care

“In 2007, we were involved in a variety of very large, multi-billion-pound public sector programmes, which we felt were really inefficient, and some of that inefficiency came from hierarchy,” Joe said, “which is necessary for such a large entity – we’re in a very privileged position to be able to implement low hierarchy.” The decision to go with low, rather than flat hierarchy, was also the result of observations of companies who had attempted this approach and “ended up with a dictatorship run by one or two founders”, according to Joe, “which was something else we were keen to avoid”.

Staying away from a purely profit-driven model was also important to the company’s development, Joe continued, “and our three principles are: good for patients and citizens, good for staff, and good for the company – which obviously does include making a profit, but that is the order we like to go about our business in, so the main focus is on what’s good for citizens, and what’s good for staff.”

Over the coming years the staff council will have an increasingly critical role in decision-making for Aire Logic, Joe told us, “some of those decisions are similar to those that shareholders might make, such as whether we branch out outside of health and care into any tech for good projects; some of those are much more operational decisions which shareholders wouldn’t usually influence – we have an EDI committee, a Green Guild, and many other groups who are tasked with driving the direction of the company in that regard.”

Technology is “increasingly allowing collective decisions to be made”, Joe said, proceeding to tell us about how Aire Logic has successfully built its own internal solutions like Aire Centre, which allows everyone to have an overview of current projects, areas of capability, current staff, and so on. “There you can see all of our current projects, and what we’re working on, like the national vaccination programme, which is probably our biggest piece of work at the moment,” he continued.

Supporting innovation in health and care 

Joe went on to share with us some of the projects Aire Logic is currently working on in the health and care space and beyond, including many national NHS projects, work with individual hospitals and trusts on patient systems, and work with Leeds City Council, Derbyshire NHS, and the Department for Education. “We are increasingly moving towards a model where staff can use this overview of our current and upcoming projects within Aire Centre, and decide what they want to work on next,” he said. In addition AireCentre contains tools like a ‘Suggestion Engine’ which allows any member of staff to propose improvements to the company policies and processes, or good ideas to help the tech4good projects they are working on. Staff can then debate improvements through the engine and ultimately vote on those they would like to see move forwards.

“We also do a lot of work in academic research and on not-for-profit projects,” Joe continued, “where maybe a clinician has come up with an idea which would be great for patients, but which perhaps won’t make much money, so they’ve struggled to go through the traditional investment routes. I was a grant fund assessor for NIHR, and even for those nationally funded grants, commercial profit is something that’s required.”

One of those projects includes The Lancaster Model, who run assessments of school pupils, predicting whether they are going to have difficulties relating to health, mental health, wellbeing, and behavioural challenges. “They work with school nurses and local authorities to introduce preventative measures for those children,” Joe said, “and it’s all about catching those problems before they happen”. Aire Logic has “taken over and are now upgrading the technology platform that delivers this” he went on, “which runs on a loss-making basis, but when you look at the case for social value, it’s definitely making a difference”.

Joe described how early on in Aire Logic’s journey, they realised how even very simple solutions could make a massive difference. Early versions of their now more comprehensive low code EPR platform were implemented with Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust. Here Aire Logic took a few weeks to configure the initial version of a solution to help patients monitor symptoms, check whether they were following their advised diet, and determine whether they were improving, stabilising, or deteriorating. By taking the Functional Gut Disorder form and developing a simpler digital version of it using technologies such as image selection and skip logic to ensure patients only answered relevant questions, the team created a much more engaging way for patients to self-monitor. Results reportedly included a 57 percent decrease in appointments needed; along with a 54 percent decrease in referral length; and a time saving of up to 12 minutes per appointment. Today AireSuite can be used for sophisticated EPR solutions at a fraction of the cost of a traditional EPR and with much faster delivery times than custom built systems.

And Aire Logic is also working with Lifelight, which enables people to take their blood pressure and heart rate directly from their phone camera. “That is really revolutionary,” he said, “because at the minute you have to have a blood pressure cuff to do that. Likewise, in due course there will be functionality to measure blood oxygen levels, which would normally require a pulse oximeter, and we may even be able to do blood tests further down the road.” In the next couple of weeks, the company will be receiving CE Class II medical device certification, he continued, “which will really help to take that next step – in a few years, there could be a camera by the bedside which can take observations every minute, and pick up on deteriorations a lot faster”. We’d love to encourage Lifelight to explore making the technology “at-cost or free”  for developing countries , where the cost of things like blood pressure cuffs may often act as a barrier.

The future of Aire Logic

Joe talked about how in five years’ time, Aire Logic’s employee-owned business model, and some of the experiments the company has tried in terms of collective decision-making, will have resulted in more confidence about future direction. “It is looking like we will have the opportunities in the next year or two to grow significantly ,” he said, “but whether we decide to grow really large will ultimately again be down to our staff”. To learn more about Aire Logic’s current projects and “tech for good” approach, please click here.

By Aimee Wilde, Partnerships Lead, Accurx

Amongst many other competing and urgent priorities, elective recovery is on the minds of most acute leaders right now. Restoring performance on the 18 week standard for elective care is also a central health priority for the Government and NHS England. The publication of the Elective Reform Plan in January and the recent  planning guidance underlines this.

However, a recent Carnall Farrar and NHS Confederation Report has spelled out the scale of the challenge in achieving the elective targets. By the end of 2029/2030, trusts will need to be doing 20% more activity every year than last year’s. It’s understandable that acute leaders will be feeling concerned, facing uncertainty on long term funding and elective payment mechanism reform, all with a stretched, burnt out workforce.

The question therefore is, how can those who are tasked with improving elective recovery create additional capacity within their services, to make progress on the backlog – today? Below we set out a few practical examples of where we’ve seen services doing this, through using tech to reform how care is delivered.

Convert unnecessary face-to-face appointments to messaging

With resources stretched, acute leaders must look to create new capacity to tackle the backlog, by challenging traditional ways of working and embracing tech. The fastest and most impactful way to do this is through reducing unnecessary face-to-face appointments and converting them to messaging where possible.

In primary care, we see that up to 40% of inbound requests from patients into their GP practice don’t require an appointment. That’s a huge reduction in unnecessary appointments, and a huge increase in capacity to see more patients, sooner, or spend longer with existing patients. The productivity improvements are hard to ignore, and so is the impact on staff morale when they get more time to care for patients who need it.

For patients, it’s also incredibly frustrating attending a face-to-face appointment that feels unnecessary, especially given the associated costs like transport, lost time, and lost work hours. The Elective Reform Plan aims to make care “look and feel different” for patients, as well as empower them and reform care delivery. One of the best ways to make all of this a reality is by streamlining and modernising how patients receive care. Digital platforms play a crucial role in this by allowing information to be collected from and shared with patients without needing to be seen face-to-face.

‘Take the best to the rest’ – three examples

1. Virtual clinics

A great example of this approach is at one acute trust’s virtual fracture clinic. Previously, all A&E patients were immediately booked into trauma & orthopaedics for a follow-up appointment, which often only served to direct them to other appointments like physiotherapy or cast adjustments. By implementing a virtual fracture clinic, patient cases are now triaged remotely by specialists without the patient being present. This enables efficient decision-making, reducing the time needed for decisions by half compared to in-person appointments. As a result, the orthopaedics team can now care for an additional 300 patients per month.

2. Long-term condition management

For patients with stable, long-term conditions, such as those on DMARDs for rheumatoid arthritis, frequent follow-up appointments may not always be required. An audit by the rheumatology service at North Bristol NHS Trustfound that in 80% of face-to-face appointments, no change was made to the patient’s medication or treatment plan. Cancelling or instead sending the information communicated in these appointments digitally, e.g. through SMS messages, would save significant time for both patients and clinicians.

3. Post-procedure follow-up

Post-procedure follow-up appointments can also often be replaced with digital communication, through patients providing key information by answering questions in a digital form about their status and recovery. At one acute trust, 49% of spinal injection follow-up appointments were replaced with a simple questionnaire sent out eight weeks post-injection, asking whether the treatment was successful in reducing patient’s pain and whether they still require a follow-up appointment. Patients who didn’t  need their appointment are either moved to a PIFU pathway or discharged, freeing up significant amounts of staff time.

Keep challenging traditional care models

Ultimately, we won’t get ahead of elective demand by doing more of the same. By challenging the necessity of traditional outpatient appointments and embracing digital platforms, acute services can streamline care, improve patient experience, and release capacity to tackle the elective care backlog. If even 15% of outpatient appointments can be released, the impact felt by patients and across the acute sector will be significant.

Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT) has won the 2024/25 HTN Health Tech Award for Health Tech Case Study of the Year for its groundbreaking collaboration with Isla Health. This partnership has transformed dermatology services by introducing remote care solutions for Community Lesion Imaging Clinics (CLICs), significantly improving patient access and operational efficiency.

By implementing Isla’s digital platform, RCHT replaced outdated referral processes with a faster, more accessible system, particularly benefiting rural and geographically isolated communities. The impact has been profound:

• 49% reduction in face-to-face appointments, freeing up clinician time for urgent cases
• Two-Week Wait (2WW) referral triage time reduced from 57 days to just 12 days
• AI-ready database with 3,000+ high-quality dermoscopic images, supporting future diagnostic advancements

The introduction of remote CLICs has streamlined workflows, reduced administrative burden, and enhanced clinical productivity. Patients no longer need to travel long distances for initial assessments, leading to improved access to care and shorter waiting times.

Addressing the Urgency of Skin Cancer Diagnosis: A Model for NHS Digital Transformation

Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in the UK, affecting thousands each year. However, early diagnosis can increase survival rates to 98% (Cancer Research UK).

In recognition of #WorldCancerDay on February 4th, RCHT’s award-winning initiative showcases the power of digital transformation in healthcare. By reducing urgent skin cancer referral times from 57 days to just 12, this program demonstrates how innovation can tackle key NHS challenges—such as rising demand, staff burnout, and referral backlogs—while improving patient outcomes.

The success of RCHT and Isla’s partnership sets a new benchmark for healthcare innovation, providing a scalable model for organisations looking to modernise pathways, enhance clinical efficiency, and deliver better patient care.

Discover how your organisation can benefit from digital-first pathway solutions in this award-winning case study.

Read the case study >  

Specialist document management company, Restore Information Management has launched a white paper entitled ‘Improving the health of your patient information’. The publication follows a consultation process across the NHS, to detail the need for transforming the way patient records are managed across NHS trusts and to outline considerations and best practices in doing so.

The company’s research revealed that paper records are currently taking up an average of 1,667 square metres per trust (and up to 6,500 sqm for the biggest hospitals).

Caroline Holmes, deputy director of patient data and records and Peter King, director of digital services and deputy chief information officer, at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust,  highlighted key challenges in managing patient records: “The biggest challenges at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust are sharing paper records across our sites to support patient care, space constraints, resourcing needs to manage records safely and effectively, and the time taken to retrieve paperwork from storage.”

The white paper addresses some of the key challenges with keeping paper records in healthcare, including lack of space and the costs involved. It shares key considerations and a check list for digitisation, which covers: creating a data architecture that’s clear, logical and easy to use; creating archiving and retrieval processes; standardised metadata policies; data capture that covers everything from post-it notes to ECGs; establishing an electronic document management system; automatic ordering of patient notes; NLPs to help clinicians quickly find the information they need; and ensuring privacy for patient information.

They identify three benefits for better information management, including: freeing up clinical space while keeping patient information within easy reach; maintaining clear audit trails and making it easy to locate files; as well as document classification and intelligent data capture preventing time wasted on locating patient details.

Potential risks involved in switching to digital are documented, citing the fear of data breaches and cyber-attacks as “always looming large in our minds”, which can lead to a “lack of public trust”. While these fears highlight the importance of securing patient data, the focus is equally on ensuring compliance. Restore Information Management emphasise that accreditations provide reassurance, not just for patients but also for NHS trusts. With “decades of experience working with the NHS, Restore Information Management ensures compliance even after the patient’s information is no longer in your care”.

The document also outlines how implementing better information management “helps pave the way” when it comes to aligning trusts with the 10 Year Plan set out by the government.

“The government’s demand for reform in exchange for funding means change isn’t just desirable: it’s a necessity to get the funding NHS trusts desperately need. Engaging Restore Information Management offers an opportunity to get change today, unlock funding tomorrow, and smooth the path to digital in the future.”

Read Restore Information Management’s full white paper on Improving the Health of Your Patient Information here.

Digital health company Inhealthcare has launched a self-referral service to help NHS organisations manage the expected surge in demand for new weight loss medications.

The solution builds on Inhealthcare’s track record of managing large-scale healthcare initiatives, with over one million patients having used its self-referral service for COVID-19 vaccination, childhood immunisation, and MSK referral services. Beyond weight loss medications, the service enables NHS teams to invite registered patients for routine health checks, cancer screening and other health services – supporting the government’s focus on digital transformation and shifting from treatment to prevention.

Early adoption across a large ICS region has already seen more than 375 patients register through the service without any formal promotion, demonstrating the likely scale of demand once fully launched.