Patients across Hounslow will soon have access to an innovative tech-enabled community and home health programme solution that will act as a blueprint for future widespread implementation of tech-enabled models for community and home health led by primary care, to combat the ever-growing primary care workforce crisis.
HMC Health, a group of five of Hounslow’s busiest GP practices, will be working with Feebris, a UK healthtech startup, who provide an AI-powered platform for precision health assessment with portable sensors to allow clinical and non-clinical workers to capture clinically reliable data and assess risk. The kits will be used both in clinics and on some home visits, and are already live across the borough.
With the Primary Care staffing shortage showing no sign of abating, and winter pressures not yet at their peak, it’s hoped that the partnership can benefit both the residents of Hounslow across the difficult winter period, and Feebris. With extensive experience across other workforce models and patient pathways, Feebris hope to support primary care partners in evolving new models of care that grow capacity for patient-centric health services.
The programme, which kicked off at the end of January, will initially run until the end of July 2022. HMC Health and will deploy four Feebris kits to the GP practices’ Health Care Assistants in order to gain more accurate insight into their patients’ health.
Feebris’ solution, backed by the NHS Innovation Accelerator, allows for improved data gathering, decision making, and delivery to patients, with proven benefits including earlier diagnosis and treatment.
With input from clinical leads at both HCA Health and Feebris, the data gathered in the six month project will inform the evolution of the project and provide initial insight into impact on workflow, patient and staff experience.
The partnership has been facilitated by the Medtech Navigator Grant, which aims to identify clinical or organisational areas of unmet need in healthcare and provide a platform for medical technology companies to respond to those needs by developing innovative new products and services.
Delivered by Health Enterprise East, the grant is supported by the European Regional Development Fund, and has previously been successfully used across areas as diverse as tele-medicine, stroke prevention and cancer detection.
“Our partnership with HMC will provide real value to the patients of Hounslow. We’ve seen incredible results in other parts of the healthcare ecosystem, and we’re excited to show how remote patient monitoring can help alleviate some of the current pressure in Primary Care” Elina Naydenova, CEO, Feebris
