Category Archives: Healthcare Tech

Care, Healthcare Tech, Lone Workers, News, Technology

Inizio Targets Health and Safety Improvement for Lone Workers with Applied Driving Partnership

Inizio Engage, the global healthcare partner, has teamed up with Applied Driving to support its clinical team and other lone workers using the Companion+ Mobile Safety App. The company has initially adopted the safer driving and personal safety solution across 65 mobile employees with a wider rollout planned for a further 115 users within its UK and US operations.

“The wellbeing of our team is of utmost importance to the business, so we are committed to identifying and using the latest health and safety innovations,” explains Kate Kelly, Managing Director UK & Ireland of Inizio Engage. “With the adoption of the Companion+ Mobile Safety and it’s personal safety features, we can elevate the welfare of those driving and operating alone by providing the highest levels of assistance, engagement and support.”

Inizio Engage has previously used a lone worker safety device, but it lacked the functionality, usability and affordability of Companion+. The mobile app’s SOS function allows an alarm to be raised with a swipe of the phone, while Triple Tap is a three-tap process – even when a device is in a pocket or bag – to call for help and the check-in timer schedules a check call to confirm safety. In addition, crash detection uses mobile phone sensors, proprietary algorithms and AI to detect when a collision has occurred.

Caroline McGlynn at Inizio Engage commented: “Companion+ will offer our mobile clinical team discreet safety and security, anytime. We have used a pendant alarm before, but these required the user to physically hold the device to activate, which made them difficult to use. The Companion+ app possesses advanced functionality that makes it simple to alert the 24/7 call centre when someone is feeling at-risk or in an emergency.”

 

Companion+ is designed to improve driver behaviour while protecting users in a sphere of safety. The app automatically assesses at-risk driving events and sends Triggered TrainingTM in the form of a safety message, video or e-learning module, tailored specifically to the user’s individual needs. With the introduction of the personal safety features, it now provides added security and peace of mind anytime in any situation.

 

“It is important to enable growth and transformation through our people, our culture, and employee experience.  Safeguarding our people is paramount when implementing services,” adds Kate Kelly.

Healthcare Tech, News

Digital consultancy acquires healthcare product specialist

Answer Digital has strengthened its healthcare division with the acquisition of Interneuron, a provider of specialist healthcare digital systems.

Leeds-based, Answer is an employee-owned digital consultancy that works extensively across the NHS to support everything from deploying AI at scale to GP interoperability. It also provides private-sector companies with services ranging from data and software engineering to artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Interneuron provides cutting-edge software to healthcare organisations with its Open Modular Care Record, openMCR, which supports direct patient care in inpatient, outpatient, and virtual care settings.

The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, will add product expertise to Answer’s 20-year history of enabling digital transformation across industries, including healthcare and finance. The breadth of the partnership between the two parties accelerates growth, and all roles will be retained.

Commenting on the deal, Richard Pugmire, CEO of Answer, said: “Bringing the two teams together will enable Interneuron to expand rapidly, by allowing them to focus on product development, with support for EPR implementation, data and integration services from Answer.

“Answer’s AI toolkit and award-winning AI implementation best practices will enhance Interneuron’s cutting-edge product suite and drive significant growth potential. Answer, perhaps best known for incubating products and start-up ideas, now has a dedicated long-term product unit, which will enable us to deliver innovative, scalable solutions across all sectors.”

Interneuron has partnered with NHS Trusts for over six years to develop, deliver, and support open-source clinical software solutions. These projects empower NHS organisations to replace outdated technology with cutting-edge software, transforming data integration, storage, and utilisation. Interneuron’s open-source philosophy ensures accessibility, allowing NHS Trusts to freely download, test, and implement the software, or opt for support from Interneuron.

Joel Ratnasothy, CEO at Interneuron, said: “We are thrilled to join an employee-owned company that shares a commitment to its values and people. Bringing our teams together will have an incredible impact on our current and future customers. It’s clear that our companies share a passion for reforming healthcare services through digital transformation and the power this can have to drive efficiency and improve outcomes for all stakeholders.

“The openMCR platform is a truly open modular care record that has been designed and built from the ground up to give our customers the most control of their data, at a time when data has become the key to  genuinely achieving healthcare service transformation.”

—
Pictured: Richard Pugmire.

Answer recently received national recognition for the Artificial Intelligence Project of the Year at the UK IT Industry Awards for its pioneering work in advancing AI, and accelerating the diagnosis of cancer, stroke and other health conditions in the NHS.

For more information visit https://interneuron.com/ and https://answerdigital.com/

Healthcare, Healthcare Tech, Manufacturing, News

ACG Becomes the World’s First Capsule Manufacturing Factory to Join the Global Lighthouse Network Community 2023-24

ACG Capsules Pithampur, India is ACG’s 1st lighthouse to join the community.

ACG, the world’s largest integrated supplier and service provider to the pharmaceutical industry, celebrated the inclusion of its capsule manufacturing facility in Pithampur, India, into the esteemed Global Lighthouse Network (GLN) by the World Economic Forum at the 54th Annual Davos Summit.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network has acknowledged the exemplary integration of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies, including artificial intelligence and big data analytics, by select factories globally. These facilities have been distinguished for their commitment to enhancing efficiency, fostering sustainable development, and simultaneously advancing their workforce’s skills and safeguarding the environment.

Upon receiving the award, Mr. Karan Singh, Managing Director, said: “I am delighted to receive this recognition on behalf of my team. For me the most unforgettable part of our journey wasn’t any technology or efficiency milestone, but the incredible team that made it all possible. Just ordinary people, united towards one goal, bringing about innovative collaborations to push boundaries of what is possible.”

He added: “One of the stand-out features of our application was the Gen-AI integration. Something that was done in the less than two weeks. In between all the debate on what Gen-AI can do to humans it is a beautiful reminder that ‘technology is brilliant, but humans drive the change’. Let’s remember that!”

 

ACG operates across 138 countries in six continents and has positioned itself as a leader in the pharmaceutical sector by focusing on high-quality capsule production, increasing responsiveness, improving production yields, and boosting workforce efficiency. The company produces billions of capsules annually and has implemented over 25 innovative applications of 4IR technologies, including the industrial internet of things (IIoT), machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), digital twins, extended reality, and generative AI.

 

Selwyn Noronha, CEO, ACG Capsules, added: “We are extremely proud of our first factory lighthouse. From its inception the facility has pioneered in its field, but this latest honour recognises the excellence in adopting AI at speed and scale.

“Our continued future-focused approach sets new benchmarks in quality and innovation, with the aim of ensuring maximum benefit for customers, regulators and the entire pharmaceutical ecosystem.”

 

Healthcare, Healthcare Tech, News

eConsult to Improve Patient Safety, Experience and Efficiency at Kingston Hospital

Digital triage provider, eConsult Health has today announced that it has agreed a new partnership with Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation to integrate its eTriage technology for patient registration and prioritisation in its Emergency Department.

The implementation sets out to strengthen the hospital’s ability to meet its government-set target of initially assessing walk-in patients within 15 minutes.

 

eTriage, is an electronic registration check-in service which uses algorithm-based questions about patient symptoms, to quickly identify, within minutes of arrival, the sickest patients and categorise walk-ins into five different priority categories (P1 – P5). The technology, which facilitates the prioritisation and triage of patients arriving at Kingston’s Emergency Department, will help reduce initial assessment waiting times for the Trust,  enhancing patient safety.

As part of the agreement, eTriage will support existing workflows and be fully integrated through existing Cerner Millennium capabilities. The check-in feature will eliminate the pre-registration queues typically associated with arriving at the Emergency Department. By reducing registration times, and automating triage, Kingston Hospital will be able to increase the proportion of patients seen for initial assessment within a 15-minute wait period, and help shorten the journey to treatment for the sickest patients, whilst assisting in the redirection of lower acuity patients.

The partnership is also aimed to free up clinical time, which will add both logistical and efficiency benefits to the Trust.

 

Dr Mark Harmon, Strategy Director at eConsult comments: “As we head into a tough winter, as if the NHS wasn’t under enough pressure, the strain is about to increase. At eConsult, our big focus is on how we put patient safety at the heart of delivery. And we’re excited about this partnership with Kingston Hospital because it sets out to  protect the quality of patient care. Working closely with Kingston Hospital, we aim to support the clinical and administrative staff that keep the wheels turning each day whilst tackling increased demand. We hope this contract will become another example for how Trusts can keep transforming digitally to improve patient care across the NHS.”

 

eTriage, an electronic registration service that uses algorithm-based questions about symptoms and medical history, quickly identifies the sickest patients and categorises walk-ins. That, coupled with eConsult’s Smart Inbox feature, will increase communication between patients and clinical staff and help accurate and efficient triaging.

Speeding up time-to-assessment has a range of benefits for patients of Kingston Hospital Trust, which includes:

  • Improving patient safety: eTriage ensures that patients requiring urgent medical attention are immediately identified and flagged to nurses within the hospital’s EPR system.
  • Redirecting to UTC earlier: Lower acuity patients will be redirected to Urgent Treatment Centres more quickly and treated sooner.
  • Reducing administrative pain points: With faster triaging, there will be less time spent queuing at reception and registering patients. Patients will have to spend less time waiting for triage.
  • Increasing patients assessed: A greater proportion of patients will be assessed within the 15-minute target, and the initial assessment (triage) will take less time. That way, patients will wait less for pain relief and their journey to diagnosis can be shorter.
  • Freeing up clinical and administrative resources: through time saved during automated check in and triage
Awards, Healthcare Tech, Manchester, News, Technology

Former NHS Nurse Wins ‘Innovator of the Year’ at Women in Tech Awards

A Nurse turned health-tech founder who lives in Greater Manchester has won an award at this year’s Computing Women in Tech Excellence Awards.

The awards, in their seventh year, recognise top-performing women from across the technology space and play an important role in increasing diversity in tech across the UK.

Emma-Louise Fusari, 42, the founder of health-tech startup In-House Health, won the ‘Innovator of the Year’ award for developing her data-informed workplace health and wellbeing solutions and for her commitment to helping business leaders establish and eliminate the root cause of issues causing work-related ill-health.

Emma-Louise said, “I’m delighted and very proud to have won this award, especially as I was up against women from household-named businesses such as Lloyds Bank, Natwest, BT, Amazon Music and Transport for London. I would like to thank the judges for recognising that I’m changing the status quo of current workplace wellbeing and that there is a better way of working that will impact and improve health, productivity and economic outcomes.”

 

Having built a business that allows her to use her 21 years of nursing knowledge and experience in chronic disease management and public health promotion, Emma-Louise is enabling organisations to make a measurable impact on their people, performance and profits through her newly developed clinically led and evidence-based health and wellbeing risk audit and programmes.

 

“To be recognised for doing what I love, which is making a difference for those I have the pleasure of working with and supporting, is truly humbling. For others to see and share my vision is phenomenal too and to be acknowledged and celebrated in a prestigious tech award is also pretty cool,” added Emma-Louise.

 

Computing’s Women in Tech Excellence awards took place at Magazine London on Thursday 23rd November and received more than 3,000 nominations. At the ceremony guests were welcomed by international rugby star Maggie Alphonsi and the awards were hosted and presented by comedian Lucy Porter.

For a full list of those highly commended and the winners, visit https://womenintechexcellence.co.uk/womenintechexcellenceawards2023/en/page/2023-winners

 

AI, Awards, Cancer, Health, Healthcare Tech, News, Technology

AI innovations set to revolutionise the NHS.

Answer Digital picked up the Artificial Intelligence Project of the Year award for its pioneering work in advancing AI, accelerating the diagnosis of cancer, stroke and other health conditions in the NHS, at the prestigious UK IT Industry Awards 2023.

The Leeds-based consultancy is working with The London Medical Imaging and AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare, a consortium of 10 NHS Trusts, to deploy a multi-modal AI platform that supports clinicians with faster and more accurate diagnosis and treatments, personalised therapies, and effective screening across various conditions and procedures.

‘AIDE’, the AI Deployment Engine, is a unique platform designed to implement AI at scale within the NHS. As an intelligent multi-modal platform, it increases the potential benefit of AI by creating a single interface for the deployment of many different AI tools, directly to NHS frontline services.

FLIP enables data from multiple NHS trusts to be used to train new AI models for future clinical use using privacy-preserving Federated Learning technology so that the patient data never needs to be pooled or shared outside of the originating NHS trust.

Based on the ongoing success at Kings College Hospital, AIDE has subsequently been rolled out in six NHS Trusts, proving itself as an effective channel for widespread AI deployment across the NHS to benefit patients.

The work is paving the way for AI-enabled hospitals and the future of patient care. Federated learning is being employed to address the long-standing issues surrounding privacy, security and anonymity when collating the large volumes of sensitive patient data traditionally required to teach machines.

Sophisticated AI algorithms from NHS medical images and patient data provide tools for clinicians to speed up and improve diagnosis and care across several patient pathways, including strokes, dementia, heart failure and cancer.

The platform receives a live stream of medical imaging data, allowing clinicians to access near real-time AI analysis within seconds. Once an AI has analysed the clinical data, the results are sent to the electronic patient record to support clinical decision-making.

In developing the award-winning solutions, Answer leveraged its cloud capabilities and understanding of NHS Trust landscapes to create a hybrid cloud/on-premise architecture that delivers value for money, innovation and rapid delivery.

Richard Pugmire, director at Answer Digital, commented: “The award is fantastic recognition for the hard work of the Answer team. We have developed a very close partnership with the NHS on what has become a nationally significant innovation that advances personalised and digitally-enabled healthcare provision across the whole service.”

“The AI programme allows Answer to bring the best technical, clinical and academic minds together to deliver a solution, capable of changing the way healthcare is provided for many years to come. Given the expertise of the partners involved and the nature of AI as a tool, the whole project has the capacity to be truly transformative for the NHS.”

Held in Battersea, London, the UK IT Industry Awards 2023, brings together industry leaders and innovators to celebrate the top achievements in the tech world over the last 12 months. The annual event emphasises acknowledging brilliance and innovation with more than thirty awards distributed, highlighting exceptional projects, companies and individuals shaping the tech landscape.

Appointments, Healthcare Tech, News

Quantexa Appoints Industry Luminaries to its Advisory Board to Accelerate Growth Plans

Former president of BlackRock, former CEO of NHSX, and former Director of GCHQ bring wealth of industry experience from finance, healthcare, and national security

Quantexa, the global leader in Decision Intelligence (DI) solutions for the private and public sectors, announced today that it has appointed three industry luminaries to its Advisory Board. These hires include Ralph Schlosstein, former CEO of Evercore and former President of BlackRock, Matthew Gould, former CEO of NHSX, and Sir Jeremy Fleming, Former Director of GCHQ. These distinguished leaders bring a wealth of expertise in finance, healthcare, and national security to Quantexa.

The expansion of Quantexa’s Advisory Board comes at a pivotal time for the organization, following the completion of a $129 million Series E funding round, led by GIC, where Quantexa joined an elite group of UK tech companies reaching breakout unicorn status. It was also announced this year that Quantexa will invest over $155M in the global AI industry over the next three years to help clients advance the use of AI to protect, optimize, and grow their organizations. By 2027, Quantexa’s total global investment in AI will reach more than $250M.

 

Ralph Schlosstein, former CEO of Evercore and former President of BlackRock, brings decades of experience in investment banking to Quantexa’s Advisory Board. His distinguished career includes playing a strategic role in helping the world’s largest asset management firm go public. Ralph’s financial acumen will play a pivotal role in shaping corporate strategy initiatives.

 

Matthew Gould, former CEO of NHSX, joins Quantexa’s Advisory Board, after serving as the British ambassador to Israel between 2010 and 2015, where Gould helped to launch the UK-Israel Technologies Hub – an initiative run in Tel Aviv to forge technology partnerships between UK and Israeli companies. More recently, Matthew leveraged his extensive background in healthcare to play a pivotal role in advising NHS on initiatives throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. At NHSX, Gould has been responsible for harnessing the power of data and technology to improve healthcare delivery. Matthew’s deep expertise will help Quantexa identify the economies and industries for strategic focus and make decisions on commercial strategy.

 

Sir Jeremy Fleming, Former Director of GCHQ, and former Deputy Head of MI5, joins the Advisory Board with more than 30 years of experience in intelligence and technology. His extensive background includes developing the National Cyber Security Centre, where he strived to make the UK the safest place to live and do business online. With a passion for making technology use in government more transparent, Sir Fleming will enhance Quantexa’s capabilities in addressing emerging threats and opportunities.

 

“We are pleased to welcome Ralph Schlosstein, Matthew Gould, and Sir Jeremy Fleming to our Advisory Board,” said Vishal Marria, CEO of Quantexa. “Their collective expertise in finance, healthcare, and national security will be invaluable as we continue to develop cutting-edge decision intelligence solutions that address the evolving needs of the market.”

 

“Quantexa’s AI-enabled technology allows its customers to protect, optimize, and grow their organizations with efficiency and transparency,” said Ralph Schlosstein, former CEO of Evercore and former President of BlackRock. “I believe Quantexa is well-positioned to capture the opportunities ahead and increase its share of the emerging Decision Intelligence category. I am looking forward to supporting the executive team as they work to accelerate their organic and inorganic growth strategy.”

“It’s an exciting time for me to be joining Quantexa’s Advisory Board, at this critical stage of growth for the company,” said Matthew Gould. “Quantexa’s innovative approach to helping customers in the private and public sectors make data their most valuable utility is revolutionizing decision making across multiple industries. I look forward to working alongside the talented team at Quantexa to connect data and drive better outcomes for organizations.”

 

Sir Jeremy Fleming, Former Director of GCHQ commented “I’m thrilled to be part of a company at the forefront of AI innovation. I look forward to combining my experience with Quantexa’s impressive capabilities, which will continue to shape how their customers use data to protect businesses and citizens.” 

 

With the help of its Advisory Board, Quantexa remains dedicated to empowering organizations to make trusted operational decisions through innovative Decision Intelligence solutions. For more on Quantexa’s Leadership team, visit here.

 

Care, Healthcare Tech, News, Software

Nourish Care expands into person-centred community care with CarePlanner acquisition. 

Nourish Care, the leading Digital Social Care records system signals expansion with acquisition of home care planning software CarePlanner

Nourish Care has announced its expansion into improving outcomes for person-centred care anywhere with the acquisition of CarePlanner, the software used by more than 2,000 domiciliary care agencies.

Nourish currently serves more than 3500 residential care providers with its flexible digital care management software and aims to adopt a more holistic approach by widening its net and delivering care management and support in the community. Funding for the acquisition  was facilitated by NatWest.

“A person’s pathway into care is very often far from straightforward and many people want to stay at home for as long as they can. The community is the place where the magic needs to happen, so that people can be at home, supported by a digital provider that can bring everyone in the circle of care together  – family, care teams, regulators, NHS care staff, etc. People who are being discharged into the community from hospital need to be supported on a platform that is used by both care workers and hospital care teams, ” says Nourish CEO and founder Nuno Almeida.

“When it is done well, social care helps to weave a web of relationships in local communities that add meaning, connection and purpose to our lives. A powerful digital tool keeps everyone informed and coordinated. It also gives the person being cared for a voice. CarePlanner is an ideal partner for us because it enables us to deliver the best possible person-centred care experience in the community.”

 

Agencies who currently use CarePlanner will continue to have access to all the functions and integrations that have made it so popular. Going forwards, Nourish will offer clients the choice of using a combination of the products that suits their needs.

Nuno says: “We will do more than simply maintain those integrations, we’ll evolve them so that partners integrated with CarePlanner can deliver even more value in the future.”

 

Nourish’s chief product officer Jeremy Baldwin, adds: “CarePlanner has more than a decade of experience delivering software that covers all aspects of care worker management including availability, visit requests, rates, rosters, monitoring of visits, payroll, etc and will become the backbone of our range of functionality enabling us to deliver services through home care providers into the wider community.”

 

Careplanner CEO and founder Matthew Sharp says: “We welcome this partnership at  CarePlanner. Nourish and CarePlanner are market leaders and this partnership will revolutionise adult social care and drive improvement across the sector.”

 

Kit Maclaren, Head of Venture & Growth Finance, NatWest comments: “We are delighted to have structured this expanded debt facility for Nourish, supporting the management team and Livingbridge as they continue to champion digital solutions that are at the heart of modern care provision. This financing was delivered through Venture & Growth Finance team, which reflects our firm’s wide dedication to support scale-up companies at each stage of their innovation lifecycle. We look forward to supporting Nourish as they continue to grow their presence in the care market.”

Healthcare Tech, News, NHS News

NHS wastes over £100M on post, enough to employ thousands of Junior Doctors

  • New analysis shows postal expenditure of 57 NHS Trusts could be used to hire over 3,000 more Junior Doctors
  • Total expenditure of NHS equates to over half of the £1.03bn required to deliver Junior Doctor pay restoration pushed for in strike action this week
  • The NHS could save £98 million pounds by digitising their postal output

 

New analysis by secure digital communications specialists Beyond Encryption, reveals the huge cost that the use of postal services inflicts on the NHS, with £1o3.7m spent by 57 NHS Trusts over the past five years1.

The figures obtained from an FOI request reveal that individual NHS Trusts were, on average, spending over £500,000 each year on post. This equates to the whole of the NHS spending over £100 million each year on post and over half a billion pounds every 5 years2.

The NHS, which is currently experiencing a staff shortage crisis and is being affected by a Junior Doctors strike this week, could theoretically hire the equivalent of 3,048 more junior Doctors with the reported spend on post3. Alternatively, as the British Medical Association4 stated, Junior Doctor pay restoration would cost the Government £1.03bn so this could contribute significantly to that deficit.

The NHS could save over £98 million by digitising their communications and no longer relying on postal services according to Beyond Encryption5.

The NHS trusts shown to have spent the most on post were as follows:

  1. University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust – £9.3m
  2. Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust – £8.55m
  3. King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – £7.3m
  4. University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust – £4.3m
  5. University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust – £3.5m

The figures also revealed significant environmental impact from the NHS’ reliance on post. When looking at the FOI responses from 39 NHS trusts, it was revealed that over 100 million letters have been sent since 20186. This significant output emits 3,680tCO2e7 which is the equivalent of driving over nine million miles in a petrol car, and would require over 6,000 trees to be planted to offset the emissions8.

The NHS trusts that have sent the most letters since 2018 are as follows:

  1. North Bristol NHS Trust – 15.7m
  2. Southport and Ormskirk Hospital – 8.7m
  3. King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – 7.8m
  4. Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust – 7.4m
  5. University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust – 6.4m

 

Paul Holland CEO and founder at Beyond Encryption commented: “All organisations should be looking for ways they can improve operating efficiencies, reduce costs and lower their environmental impact – and the NHS is no different. These figures reveal not only the astronomical financial cost but also the damaging environmental impact the NHS’ reliance on post is having. It’s vital that in 2023, the NHS looks to modernise and embrace digital transformation strategies to implement secure, cost effective and efficient communication services. Otherwise, the institution will simply be unable to navigate future challenges and deal with the  increased pressure and strain it will undoubtedly face.”

 

Tom Baldock, Managing Director at Synertec, which provides 35% of the communication output for the NHS, said: “I completely agree with Paul’s comments regarding the need for comms with improved efficiency and reduced costs within organisations. At Synertec, we firmly believe that digital communication will play a significant part in the future of NHS comms, and we are excited by some of the innovation that Beyond Encryption has applied to this area. Secure email can become a huge piece of the communications puzzle for organisations looking to streamline their interactions. However, as we continue to support many NHS trusts with their conversion to digital, we believe a wider communication strategy must be put in place to ensure that patients receive correspondence in a format that meets their needs. This could be digital, post, a mixture of both, or specific accessibility formats such as braille.”

Healthcare Tech, News

New health technology will revolutionise asthma management saving millions for the NHS

  • Asthma and other respiratory conditions are the third biggest cause of death in the UK and cost the NHS more than £3b in 2022.
  • A Cambridge-based Health Tech company has developed a new technology that will revolutionise patient understanding to improve life-long condition management.
  • electronRx says the new technology will target the 5,000 Emergency Department visits and costs of prescription medications associated with Asthma saving hundreds of millions for the NHS.

Cambridge-based Health Tech company electronRx has been undertaking studies in healthcare settings worldwide after developing a new technology designed to revolutionise patient condition management through education and real-time information.

Experts at the company have been working alongside leading healthcare providers, payers, and pharmaceutical companies across the globe to develop the new, sub-dermal technology that connects with a patient’s mobile device to record real-time data about life-long conditions.

In the final stages of development, the company targets patients with one of the most common and costly, life-long conditions affecting the NHS, Asthma. Asthma accounts for 5,000 NHS Emergency Department visits every month, with a dramatic 149% increase in admission for children, costing the NHS more than £3bn in 2022.

Asthma causes fear and anxiety in patients, carers, and parents due to the frightening symptoms associated with the approach to a potential attack. However, experts believe that if the patient – or parent of a child – had better education around their condition and could monitor and understand the way their body is changing approaching an issue, visits to the Emergency Department could reduce almost immediately and have huge cost saving for the NHS.

Dr. Bipin Patel, CEO of electronRx, who developed the technology, explains: “The answer to reducing overcrowding in Emergency Departments and the 8am race for a GP appointment lies with the patient. We see all too often patients in a state of heightened anxiety, visiting the Emergency Department to then be released without further intervention in a matter of hours. Why? It is because they do not understand how to manage their condition. Asthma is a costly example of this. Many of the thousands of admissions to the ED every month are completely unnecessary, with many patients being released with no more intervention than the reassurance of the nurse or consultant. electronRx has been working to create a technology that gives the patient the required understanding of their condition, providing them with the ability to monitor essential bio-signs – much like diabetic patients can monitor their blood sugar – allowing them to manage their condition with correctly administered interventions, such as the use of an inhaler.”

Aside from the benefits to the patient, the technology also aids healthcare providers and third-party stakeholders. The data is collected securely with the patient’s mobile device, storing data 24/7 to form a unique yet powerful insight into the condition, its progress or recession over time and how effectively the patient manages it.

Dr Patel explains: “Asthma is a prevalent condition in the UK and around the globe, affecting adults and children alike. Healthcare professionals, over the years, have learned much about triggers and causes of attacks. What we have developed now is the next evolution in data collection about any condition that can have life-long implications for the patient. The GP can access the data to monitor the patient, reducing the need for as many appointments for routine tests. Healthcare providers can give the patient a more personal understanding of their condition and provide caregivers with more tailored advice by developing more educated condition management programmes to prevent worsening symptoms. It will show the efficacy of interventions – such as using an inhaler. It will identify if the patient is obtaining the correct dose from the drug, which will identify if the patient, as is the case in most, is misusing it (or not at all). The positive implications across the entire UK healthcare system are phenomenal and exciting and will go a long to address the issues faced by our NHS. But more importantly, as usage grows, the billions of bytes of data and insight collected across the globe will provide healthcare researchers and scientists with more detailed and real-time data than ever before.”

electronRx has been undertaking investigations with a range of lifelong conditions through clinical and healthcare partners in the UK and worldwide. The trials have proven the efficacy and legitimacy of the technology, and the company are preparing for a launch into the private sector imminently.