London NHS CCGs Discuss Benefits of Using New HealthSuite App from Ampersand

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Pilot digital therapeutic project allows patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases to self-manage their conditions, improving health outcomes and quality of life

LONDON, July 19, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) from across London have expressed interest in trialling and adopting digital self-management platform HealthSuite from Ampersand Health as a new care pathway that reduces budget strains and increases patient empowerment.

It follows a roundtable event in the Parliamentary offices at Portcullis House in London yesterday, where the speakers included Melanie Onn, MP - the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), and Dr. Gareth Parkes, Clinical Lead in Gastroenterology at Bart's Health Hospital.

The event confirms the NHS's commitment to exploring innovative new technologies that allow patients suffering from long term conditions like IBD to better manage their own health, while providing more efficient delivery of clinical care.

15 million people in England suffer from a Long Term Condition (LTC). Furthermore, the number of people with three or more LTCs has risen from 1.9 million people in 2008 to 2.9 million in 2018. With the growing number of people suffering from inflammatory diseases, the pressure grows for health care providers to provide long-term solutions to meet this increase in demand.

Given that £7 in £10 is spent on treating LTCs within the NHS, managing conditions on a much more granular basis would offer opportunity for improvements to care pathways, patient experience and most of all, patient outcomes.

MyIBD Care – a module of HealthSuite - has been piloted in the Gastroenterology departments at King's College University Hospital and Barts Health and has contributed to significant cost savings and efficiencies as part of the South East London IBD care pathway, with more than £1m saved in the first year alone.

"The MyIBD Care app allows a vital step to be taken in helping IBD patients self-manage their care because self-management offers health benefits across the entire spectrum of IBD Care." - Melanie Onn, MP

Data from the qualitative observational study at King's showed 63% of patients were happy to use the app exclusively for routine clinical contacts and a further 22% stated they would accept a reduced frequency of face-to-face hospital appointments because of the app's efficacy and ease of access to their clinical care team.

Clinical staff at King's College have uniformly stated that the app reduces their planning time by having a better-managed remote view of a patient's condition and medical history. Importantly, the app allows them to make early clinical interventions when it matters most, while decreasing the number of unnecessary outpatient appointments at the same time.

Ampersand are also in integration discussions with the IBD registry (the first UK-wide collection of anonymised adult and paediatric IBD patient data for prospective audit and research), meaning MyIBD Care data will feed directly into the Registry to give healthcare professionals a complete patient view.

"In an environment in which LTCs account for 70-75% of the NHS' budget and where the number of patients is rising, there is considerable need for new models of care. That requires joined up thinking from a policy perspective all the way down to the patient where self-management provides empowerment to the patient." - Nader Alaghband, CEO, Ampersand Health

About Ampersand Health

Ampersand is a social impact company focused on digital therapeutics. Our view is that patients that are active and engaged in managing their care have better health outcomes, and that digital is a powerful tool for driving behaviour change.

Ampersand co-developed their platform with leading clinicians at Barts and Kings College Hospital, with support from industry, and it is in use at a growing number of hospitals. It comprises self-management apps for patients with a variety of (mainly inflammatory) LTCs; and management and analytics portal that allows hospital teams to view data and manage their patients in a light touch but effective way. The platform is available for different conditions including Gastroenterology and Rheumatology.

For more information on Ampersand Health, please contact Rawane Jabara on +44-207-112-7100 or by email on [email protected].

www.ampersandhealth.co.uk