The Royal London Hospital has highlighted the impact of the use of a virtual platform for its children’s cancer ward, reportedly enabling children deemed well enough to be monitored from home.

Launched in 2023, the trust noted that children with cancer are at an increased risk of infection, and when “a patient develops a fever they need to be admitted to hospital for at least 48 hours, where they can be at further risk of picking up other illnesses”. However, with the virtual ward in place, those deemed well enough after an initial assessment can return home to be cared for.

Whilst at home, patients are monitored using equipment which records their observations every four hours, with data “continuously monitored by the clinical nurse specialist team who stay in touch with the parents and can escalate concerns when necessary”.

Last year, around 44 percent of patients presenting with a fever were managed through the virtual ward, according to the trust. A video from the Barts Health YouTube account features a case study of a young patient cared for on the ward is available to watch here.

Insights on virtual wards from across the NHS

Join HTN on 29 April, 10:00 – 11:00 for a webinar looking at the future of virtual wards, taking a closer look at virtual wards in practice, exploring different approaches and learnings, as well as considering the potential for emerging technologies. With the help of our panel of experts, we’ll discuss a range of approaches to the virtual ward concept, including examples of best practice, challenges, failures and successes.

Black Country ICB has published a prior information notice for the procurement of a remote monitoring and virtual ward platform to support the delivery of “multi-disciplinary and collaborative health services”, by opening a pre-market engagement ahead of a procurement mid-2025. Valued at £600k with an estimated four-year timescale, the procurement is part of a collaborative effort covering both primary and secondary care, and The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust, The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has shared an evaluation of its virtual royal infirmary programme, demonstrating the impact of its “hospital-level care directly to patients’ homes”. Since launching in June 2023, the service covers seven specialities, across acute medicine, cardiology, gastroenterology, general surgery, renal, respiratory and vascular care, with the hospital noting the service supports a “reduction in unnecessary hospital admissions and supports early discharge”, adding “in line with patients’ preferred choice of care”.

North London NHS Foundation Trust has published its digital strategy, with a focus on AI and data, EPR optimisation, launching an NLFT app building programme, digital foundations and infrastructure, creating a culture of innovation, and supporting staff with digital skills.

“Our strategy is not only about adopting new technologies but also about ensuring that these technologies are implemented in a way that aligns with our clinical strategy and long-term objectives,” the trust states.

The strategy itself is built around five themes: excellence in digital services, data management and intelligence, smart infrastructure, AI, and people and innovation. Within these themes, the trust commits to making informed decisions about technology, leveraging clinical and business intelligence to drive better health outcomes, exploring cloud-hosted solutions and hybrid server architecture, using AI technologies to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs, and building a digitally literate workforce, “utilising technology to improve care coordination, efficiency, and service user outcomes”.

One of the focal points of the strategy is people enablement and innovation, where the trust recognises digital literacy as a key component of success. It makes a commitment to investing in comprehensive training programmes to enhance the digital skills of staff, board members and service users, and establishing clinical digital leadership across all disciplines, with these leaders responsible for providing advice and guidance, as well as for ensuring advancements are “both practical and impactful for the future of healthcare”.

Fostering a culture of innovation will also play a part in this, with the trust hoping to create an environment in which new technologies can be embraced and innovation can be encouraged. It notes the importance of developing the ability to “quickly adopt and implement new digital tools” such as AI-enhanced triage and virtual care platforms, and makes a commitment to creating a centralised innovation hub to allow the testing and scaling of new solutions, and to ensure the trust remains “agile and responsive to the evolving needs of its service users”.

The trust also highlights its ambition to become a data-driven organisation, focusing on data governance and quality, and promoting the use of advanced analytics to support population health management. As part of this, it plans to integrate data platforms such as existing cloud-based solutions, to ensure staff can access real-time data to support their decision making.

AI is also set to play a considerable role in the trust’s digital future, with the strategy pointing to North London’s desire to harness its capabilities and introduce AI-assisted triage and natural language processing to streamline clinical workflows and grant staff more time to care. “Predictive analytics, powered by AI, will enable staff to anticipate patient needs, improving service delivery and reducing waiting times,” it states. “AI has the potential to support everything from administrative processes to clinical decision-making, helping the organisation run more smoothly and efficiently and reduce the administrative burden on staff.”

A roadmap sets out activities such as EPR optimisation, strengthening technology governance, building a common infrastructure and launching the NLFT app building programme, for completion in the short-term to 2025. Further activities, covering the development of smart infrastructure, leveraging AI, supporting innovation and building a clinically led digital workforce, then take the trust through to 2029.

To read the digital strategy in full, please click here.

Focus on digital literacy and skills across the NHS

A HTN Now panel discussion last year focused on strategies for empowering a digital workforce, and how to develop workforce technology literacy through scalable and effective digital learning and support programmes. From Cambridge University Hospitals we were joined by Dr Wai Keong Wong, director of digital and consultant haematologist, and Claire Tolliday, chief nursing information officer, along with uPerform’s EHR education director Liz Griffith. Our panellists shared their experience and advice in this area, including how to overcome challenges such as scaling on-demand training and performance support to keep up with rollouts and upgrades; reducing frustration by delivering training materials when and where they are needed; and saving time for caregivers to focus on their patients.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals and Health Innovation Kent, Surrey, Sussex joined us to share examples of educational programmes to support digital programmes, as well as best practices for engaging the workforce in digital education and tech. To form our panel, we welcomed George Anibaba, senior innovation manager at Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex, as well as Geoff Petrie, digital training manager and David Holland, deputy CCIO for Allied Health Professionals, both from Leeds Teaching Hospitals.

For a HTN Now panel discussion in February, we were joined by expert panellists including Dr Penny Kechagioglou, CCIO and deputy CMO at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust; Stuart Dures, digital skills development manager at Greater Manchester Mental Health; Dan Chilcott, client enablement director at Patchwork Health; and Sally Mole, senior digital programme manager – digital portfolio delivery team at The Dudley Group. Our panellists considered some of the key determinants of successful NHS workforce transformation, looking at how best to drive buy-in and support the workforce, and noting challenges and barriers to transformation.

HTN recently spoke with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust on the deployment its electronic prescribing and medicines administration system (ePMA) at the trust, highlighting benefits around increased efficiency and patient safety.

The ePMA system has reportedly been successfully deployed at Musgrove Park Hospital and all community hospitals, with the team now focusing on enabling ePMA across all acute inpatient settings and emergency departments at Yeovil Hospital.

On the system’s main benefits, the trust highlights “clear, accessible information” for patients and staff, clinical decision support, and the automation of “many tasks that were traditionally done on paper”. It also offers the ability for information to be shared or transferred between systems, and generates an audit log detailing each step in the process, the trust stated.

David Chalkley, deputy chief clinical information officer and associate director of pharmacy, shared that the system is simplifying patient transfers between the trust’s sites, adding: “This consolidation and expansion of prescribing system is a significant digital transformation as it will enhance care continuity between settings, improve medication prescription accuracy, increase efficiency by streamlining process, enable connected medication records, enhance patient safety, and act as a digital gateway for additional digital transformation.”

Whilst there have been “a few bumps along the way”, according to digital project manager Jurgis Petunovas, “any issues that have been encountered have been used to improve the subsequent deployments and all of this learning will be used to progress the roll-out in Yeovil”.

In June, join HTN, Leo Marti-scott, digital lead pharmacist and David Chalkley, associate director of pharmacy, deputy CCIO, and clinical safety officer from Somerset NHS Foundation Trust for a webinar to focus on the utilisation of dm+d native digital clinical systems.

Wider news on digital and data from Somerset

Earlier this year, Somerset ICS shared key updates on their cyber security strategy, with the aim to fulfil five objectives surrounding the reduction of cyber risks. The objectives are outlined in order to achieve this: developing and embedding a cyber aware culture; improving cyber risk visibility and management; building robust third-party assurance; prioritising collaboration; and ensuring ongoing resilience.

The ICB also highlighted progress on its Recovering Access to Primary Care programme, noting digital progress against key deliverables. The ICB states that more appointments are being provided than before the pandemic, however its approach to access is wider than focusing on the number of appointments and to “promote community-based person-centred care”. Here, the ICB references as an example, to increase self-referral opportunities for patients and focus on digital innovation to improve efficiency, patient and staff experience.

On the region’s Digital, Data and Technology strategy, published with the intention of supporting communications and building a movement for change, the ICS shares how it conducted an initial assessment of “as is” capabilities, requiring an audit of technologies in use across the system, integrations, digital services, and dashboards. This included domain mapping to understand how different parts of the system work together and how that can be improved, how information moves, how business processes function, and potential future opportunities.

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust has published a prior information notice looking to procure up to four digital solutions for the implementation of voice recognition software.

According to the trust, the four solutions will be split into three different lots, covering digital diction, speech recognition with generative AI and outsourced transcription. The procurement process will be “subject to business case approval” with the pre-market engagement process helping to “form the tender process”.

The contract is expected to last for a five-year period between November 2025 – December 2030, with the total value not yet specified.

Last year, the trust also published plans for the procurement of a digital experience solution designed to allow the IT department to proactively monitor and manage the health and performance of equipment across trust facilities.

NHS trusts investing in digital transformation: the wider trend 

Somerset NHS Foundation Trust has partnered with OX.DH, a health tech supplier affiliated with the University of Oxford, to introduce a new virtual consultations solution. The platform successfully went live in March across all Somerset FT services, to enable patients to have video consultations with Somerset FT clinicians and healthcare teams.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust announced a contract award of £102,000 for a one-year deal to London-based Dr Julian Medical Group Ltd for Talking Therapies third party provision. A prior information notice was also published earlier in the year, detailing the trust’s intention to procure a patient engagement portal solution, with a budget of £800,000.

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust recently opened a tender notice valued at £100k, for the procurement of a digital dental management EPR system. This aligns with the trust’s “digital by default” target, which was listed as a key element of their sustainability action plan, published last year to support aims for net zero carbon emissions by 2040.

The Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust’s latest board meetings in January and March, to see what insight they offered on ongoing digital transformation projects, digital priorities, innovations, challenges, and more.

Approving NCA’s EPR business readiness and business plan is listed in the trust’s objectives for the year, as part of the principal objective to prepare infrastructure, systems, and processes “that work towards improvement in population health and continue to work with partners to address health inequalities”. As part of the board assurance framework, the trust also sets out controls currently in place including an infrastructure remediation and an EPR transformation programme, and gaps in control that could be filled to mitigate risk associated with digital systems sustainability, noting the need for a “multi-year investment plan aligned to infrastructure and application roadmap”. Risk score here remains “high” at 20, with a target risk score of 9.

Andrew Stallard, senior responsible owner for the EPR programme, shared an update highlighting delays “primarily due to extended timelines for obtaining outline business case approval from NHS England” and concerns that these delays could “increase the overall cost and pressure on resources within the organisation”. Risks are also outlined around ensuring organisational readiness for “a complex digital transformation”, and limited capacity within the digital team. The programme’s current focus is on readiness activities, the update continues, to include mapping applications and aligning projects like the electronic document management system; whilst next steps involve refining the programme’s governance and ensuring “the readiness of key systems”.

In a programme update on NCA’s digital infrastructure remediation work, the trust shared that seven projects are “progressing well”, including working with suppliers to complete project phases prior to implementation. For Wifi optimisation, delivery is reportedly “well underway”, with hardware delivered to relevant sites for deployment; the business case for a project looking to make a strategic upgrade to Windows 11 has been approved and moved into delivery phase; a project looking to implement a new on-premises and cloud backup and recovery platform has been successful and is entering the closure phase; and work on platform re-engineering remediation has moved to a delivery phase.

The trust’s January meeting also shared a report from its research and innovation committee which highlighted challenges around recruiting and retaining clinical coders, an area where NCA is “hampered by digital limitations and the reliance on coders being on site due to the heavy reliance on paper systems”. Referring to this as “a developing problem”, the papers go on to note that whilst agency staff could be used to keep the trust moving, “as other trusts were modernising their electronic patient records, they were recruiting more coders”.

A challenge for the trust relating to the population health agenda, as brought to the board’s attention by Lorna Allan, CDIO at NCA, is reportedly that initiatives in this space require “a patient record on an effective digital footprint”. Whilst Lorna confirmed that “discussions were being held around the development of an appropriate data strategy and use of artificial intelligence”, she added that there was “significant work needed to progress this agenda”, suggesting a need to “revisit what could realistically be achieved in relation to the population health objective”.

Elsewhere, a report from the quality and performance committee noted the impact of a “lack of data and digital visibility” around dates of discharge on forward planning, with plans to discuss the potential for greater visibility to be achieved using current digital systems. And in a report from the research and innovation committee, the “age and scale” of the data centre server estate is listed as a “cause for concern” due to a third of 1,900 servers already being unsupported and a further third to “age beyond supported software versions each year over the next three years”.

A further update is also offered by the board in March around digital systems sustainability, with the trust sharing that good progress has been made, and that discovery work has been undertaken around enterprise architecture. Also, recruitment is ongoing for solution architects and data architects, although the expensive nature of this specialist skillset means the organisations is “exploring creative ways to onboard experienced and creative people into these roles”.

We covered NCA’s first digital strategy back in October, setting out plans up to 2030 for the future of digital within the organisation in areas in areas including self-care, remote monitoring and access to records. The strategy focuses in particular on the next three years, with the aim of establishing the foundations for a “safe and more effective NCA”. These foundations are to be achieved primarily through the implementation of a single EPR solution across all acute hospitals, with a targeted go-live in 2027. Additionally, NCA plans to establish a single community services EPR intending to strengthen NCA’s connectivity to its places; this programme aims to commence in 2025. Once these foundations have been achieved, the trust expects to gain “greater clarity regarding the transformational opportunities that exist and will form the basis of an iterative and evolving digital strategy”.

Digital progress and priorities from across the NHS

For a recent HTN Now webinar, we were joined by a panel of experts to discuss the role of digital in supporting NHS reform – modernising services, shifting from hospital to community, and supporting the move from reactive to proactive care. We welcomed Dawn Greaves, associate director of digital transformation at Leeds Community Healthcare; Ananya Datta, associate director of primary care digital delivery at South East London ICS; and Stuart Stocks, lead enterprise architect with Aire Logic. Panel members shared their insight and experience from a wide range of digital projects, highlighting what worked well and their learnings; how their organisations are currently tackling key challenges such as capacity and demand, and managing waiting lists; and balancing risk with innovation.

Developing digital infrastructure is a key facet of South West London ICS’s latest digital strategy for 2025 – 2028. It notes actions to be taken on digital infrastructure, to include establishing expert digital teams and developing digital competence, implementing systems and processes that are effective, and consolidating systems to reduce duplication. It adds developing a consistent, robust, and secure digital infrastructure to cover cyber security and effective information governance, and ensuring interoperability and value for money of system procurements, as well as levelling up provider digital maturity.

An update from Chris Ibell, CDIO at Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB, highlighted the system’s focus on cyber security, outlining the cyber risk to its organisations, and sharing plans to focus on an integrated care system approach to incident response planning. The update follows a cyber crisis simulation event, ICB board development sessions and cyber security workshops over the past year. The cyber simulation event identified 22 actions, the update notes, focusing on processes, plans, and the need for colleagues to “continue to embed an ICS approach to threat mitigation and incident response”.

Somerset NHS Foundation Trust has partnered with OX.DH, a health tech supplier affiliated with the University of Oxford, to introduce a new virtual consultations solution.

Somerset FT incorporates acute, community and mental health and disability services across Somerset as well as Symphony Healthcare Services which runs a quarter of GP practices in the county.

The platform successfully went live in March across all Somerset FT services, to enable patients to have video consultations with Somerset FT clinicians and healthcare teams, replacing the current virtual consultation tool and enhancing the overall patient experience, the trust said.

The OX.DH digital health platform has been developed using Microsoft Azure infrastructure, leveraging the national NHS investment in Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft Teams, which is already widely used across the trust. This trust highlighted that the integration ensures a seamless and secure virtual consultation experience for both patients and clinicians.

“We are delighted to partner with OX.DH. Embracing innovative technology is at the heart of our commitment to provide accessible and high-quality healthcare to our community. This initiative will empower our patients with more convenient ways to connect with our clinicians, and we are confident it will significantly enhance their experience with our Trust,” said, Demelza Douglas, paediatric occupational therapist and associate chief clinical information officer at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.

Nicola Boyland, service lead for talking therapies, added: “Being able to offer our patients choice in how they receive care is important and video consultations plays an important role in seeing more patients, in the right place at the right time. The stress of attending appointments in person, due to having to travel or find parking often puts patients off accessing treatment.”

CEO of OX.DH, John Kosobucki, commented on the partnership: “We are thrilled to be working with Somerset NHS Foundation Trust to introduce our virtual consultations platform. This launch provides clinical teams and patients with an intuitive experience that mirrors the technology they use in their daily lives.”

Wider news on digital and data from Somerset

Earlier this year, Somerset ICS shared key updates on their cyber security strategy, with the aim to fulfil five objectives surrounding the reduction of cyber risks. The objectives outlined to achieve this include: developing and embedding a cyber aware culture; improving cyber risk visibility and management; building robust third-party assurance; prioritising collaboration; and ensuring ongoing resilience.

The ICB also highlighted progress on its Recovering Access to Primary Care programme. The ICB states that more appointments are being provided than before the pandemic, however its approach to access is wider than focusing on the number of appointments and to “promote community-based person-centred care”. Here, the ICB references as an example, to increase self-referral opportunities for patients and focus on digital innovation to improve efficiency, patient and staff experience.

On the region’s Digital, Data and Technology strategy, published with the intention of supporting communications and building a movement for change, the ICS shares how it conducted an initial assessment of “as is” capabilities, requiring an audit of technologies in use across the system, integrations, digital services, and dashboards. This included domain mapping to understand how different parts of the system work together and how that can be improved, how information moves, how business processes function, and potential future opportunities.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has announced a contract award of £102,000 for a one-year deal to London-based Dr Julian Medical Group Ltd for Talking Therapies third party provision.

The notice shares that the trust required an “innovative, efficient, and effective solution to support and enhance the delivery of Talking Therapies and associated Psychology services (Step 2, Step 3 and Step 3+)”, which would also offer “flexibility and responsiveness to changing needs and demands of the services and patients”.

According to the award, the procurement is intended specifically to add capacity for Talking Therapies Step 2, 3 and 3+ therapy.

The trust also recently shared plans to procure an electronic prescribing and medicines administration solution, with a specification that the solution will be cloud-based and suitable for use within all care settings. According to a prior information notice, the selected supplier will be required to work as a strategic partner alongside the trust to “develop and innovate” the product, with particular focus on developing interoperability between external systems.

A prior information notice was also published earlier this year detailing the trust’s intention to procure a patient engagement portal solution, with a budget of £800,000. It comes as part of the trust’s efforts to increase its digital maturity, in which a PEP has been highlighted as a “key deliverable”. As such, the trust is looking for a solution that can interoperate with multiple electronic patient record solutions, with the notice outlining a number of essential requirements.

Digital mental health

Cambridgeshire & Peterborough ICS has announced that its shared care record now shares five types of key mental health documents, to help provide instant access to more detailed mental health information. The five documents being shared are: care plans; crisis plans; diagnosis extracts; risk assessment; mental health act notices. Each one accessible through the person summary dashboard within the shared care record, with the aim to give health and social care staff access to this type of information for the first time through the record.

New guidance has been published by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, focusing on developing safeguards, regulation and evaluation for UK digital mental health technologies including mental health apps, AI-powered assessments, and virtual reality therapy.

NHS England also recently published eight principles for the “appropriate use” of digital technologies in mental health settings, aiming to provide a guide for procurement, implementation, data protection, policy, staff training and recording in patient care and treatment plans.

NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB has awarded a contract to the digital mental wellness programme myHappymind, an online educational resource aimed at supporting children and young people with their mental health and wellbeing. The procurement of the myHappymind platform aims to provide children aged 3-11 with “interactive and pre-prepared lessons” delivered by primary school teachers.

A research programme in Cambridge, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is supporting Lyzeum Ltd, a spinout from the University of Cambridge, to commercialise its AI tool that aims to accelerate coeliac diagnosis.

Led by Professor Liz Soilleux, honorary consultant pathologist at CUH and professor of diagnostics & biomarkers at the University of Cambridge, the study involved submitting 4,000 sets of biopsy images from five NHS hospitals to the algorithm “to help it distinguish between healthy samples and those with coeliac disease”. When the algorithm was tested on another 650 biopsies, the trust reports it made a correct diagnosis “in 97 out of 100 cases”.

According to CUH, researchers have been working with patient groups, including through Coeliac UK, to “understand the patient response to AI-aided diagnosis”, with a key concern identified around explainability, and difficulties people may experience in understanding what patterns AI is using to come to a conclusion. Ensuring diagnoses are explainable is “key for the researchers”, CUH continues, “and is likely to be a critical step in the AI being approved, and trusted, for use across the NHS”.

Florian Jaeckle, first author on the paper, is quoted as saying that the next step is testing the algorithm “in a much larger clinical sample”, which will place the team “in a position to share this device with the regulator, bringing us nearer to this tool being used in the NHS”.

Digital diagnosis and the role of AI

The UK government recently announced £82.6 million in research funding for three projects, two of which are using emerging technologies such as AI to tackle cancer. The government has also made a commitment to provide researchers with access to “cutting-edge computing resources” to help harness “the power of AI”. An example is PharosAI, a project seeking to bring together NHS and Biobank data onto a “unified, powerful, secure, AI platform”, a joint venture between King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Barts Health NHS Trust, aiming to develop AI models to deliver “new breakthroughs” in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

A recent news in brief article covered a collaboration between University Hospitals Dorset and Bournemouth University aiming to identify volatile organic compounds (VOCs) specific to skin cancers, and develop a device capable of detecting them.

Elsewhere, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals is working with the University of East Anglia to develop a device that helps with identifying the most common causes of dizziness. The Continuous Ambulatory Vestibular Assessment (CAVA) is being tested by patients across the country, analysing hours of eye and head movement data with an aim to help “speed up the diagnosis” of dizziness. 20 hospitals have reportedly been taking part in the clinical trial.

Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust has awarded a contract worth £572,000 to DrDoctor for the provision of a patient engagement portal.

In a contract award notice published last week, the trust shared details of the contract award, described as the “provision of services for patient engagement tools, consumables, transformation services”, made by direct award via G-Cloud 14 Lot 2 “after pre-established internal requirements were entered into the digital marketplace”.

At HTN we focused on patient portals last month, hosting a panel discussion on communication tech, with the help of panellists including Jothi Vasan-O’Leary, medical information officer and outpatient clinical lead (GIRFT) at University Hospitals of Derby and Burton; Daniel Parkinson, digital IT project manager at Leeds Teaching Hospitals; Sally Mole, senior digital programme manager – digital portfolio delivery team at The Dudley Group; and Emma Stratful, chief operating officer at OX.DH. Our panellists, discussed adoption, engagement, the use of AI and automation technologies, functionality and the future role of patient portals and communication tech in tackling NHS challenges.

Tech supporting patient engagement from across the NHS

A poll over on our LinkedIn page asked the question: What do you think should be the biggest priority for digital primary care – patient-facing digital tools, interoperability, funding to support innovation, or back office efficiencies? With 39 percent of the vote, patient-facing digital tools came out on top. Coming in a close second was interoperability with 38 percent of the vote.

For a HTN Now panel discussion late last year, we were joined by a panel of experts to talk about current priorities and projects around patient engagement and patient-centred solutions, to share learnings on adoption, and to highlight outcomes and challenges around engaging patients with support from digital. Forming the panel, we welcomed Andy Webster, consultant in emergency medicine and CCIO at Leeds Teaching Hospitals; Sally Mole, senior digital programme manager – digital portfolio delivery team at The Dudley Group; and Brendan Casey, CEO of Swiftqueue.

Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has introduced digital health coaching app, Surgery Hero to help patients prepare for surgery.

Using AI, Surgery Hero “quickly and accurately” identifies patients who may need additional support before and after an operation, with an aim to “reduce the risk of complications before a procedure and accelerate a patient’s recovery”.

According to the trust, eligible patients will receive further information about this new project via a text message or email directly from Surgery Hero, “inviting them to download the app and complete a sign-up process”. If patients choose to proceed, they’ll be given access to the Surgery Hero app before receiving “12 weeks of digital assistance” prior to their operation taking place. The service allows patients to have calls with a personal health coach as well as offering “tailored, on-demand resources and information, peer support groups, and learning workshops”.

Dr Clare Hammell, chief medical officer and deputy chief executive officer at Mid Cheshire Hospitals, commented: “The app empowers patients to take an active role in managing their own healthcare. Using the expert support and guidance, it helps them to get in better physical and mental shape for their upcoming operation. Patients who take part in programmes like these have been shown to have a lower risk of complications and can return to normal activities sooner.”

Surgery Hero was recently acquired by Sword Health, as part of their investment in the UK health sector.

Digital healthcare apps: the wider trend 

British Heart Foundation recently awarded nearly £230k to University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, for their Appitrator app. According to the trust, the funding will help to further develop an algorithm they have created, which records “key patient data” such as blood pressure, heart rate, weight, and potential side effects and then uses that information to generate personalised medication recommendations.

The Health Service Executive Health App has been launched in Ireland, offering patients a “digital front door” to health services, as part of their goal to digitise patient health records and to “make it easier for everyone to navigate the health service”.

Airedale NHS Foundation Trust recently won a bid to fund the rollout of the Careology cancer app. The app will be used within the trust to provide 24/7 support to cancer patients and help to understand their needs, keeping patients connected with the relevant healthcare teams. It will also reportedly support patients with self-management of their own care and treatment.

Learn more about the latest health tech news with HTN and join the conversation by registering for our upcoming events where we speak to industry experts from across the healthcare sector.