Accelerator company Inhealthcare helps Sirona care & health to scale up home-based care for people with Covid

Inhealthcare, an alumnus of the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator, is helping Sirona care & health to rapidly scale up home-based NHS care for vulnerable people diagnosed with Covid. The digital health company’s remote monitoring platform has supported more than 3,500 people since the service launched.

Sirona, which provides adult and children’s NHS and Local Authority funded community services, is providing the optional ‘virtual ward’ service for people in high-risk groups across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. The technology safely and securely connects people with clinicians and enables early intervention if there are any signs of health deterioration.

The service is designed to identify cases of ‘silent hypoxia’, where people have low oxygen levels but not significant shortness of breath. People use a pulse oximeter to monitor their oxygen saturation levels and report these readings to healthcare teams via a choice of communication channels including email, SMS text message or automated telephone call, making the service fully inclusive. The monitoring ensures individuals receive more timely hospital treatment if required.

Inhealthcare helps monitor Covid symptoms while minimising face-to-face contact and allowing individuals to recover safely at home. Staff view individual readings on a web-based dashboard and receive alerts flagging those who need support or have not submitted their readings.

We are delighted to be partnering with Sirona care & health to drive innovation in healthcare during the pandemic. This service demonstrates our approach in action – the rapid roll-out of a scalable digital health service to support individuals at home and help improve health outcomes. This service is for Covid but can easily be broadened to a diverse range of long-term conditions. The support we received from the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator programme was pivotal in allowing us to scale our service to deliver tangible benefits to multiple NHS organisations.

– Bryn Sage, Chief Executive, Inheathcare

Inhealthcare supplies regular data reports for clinicians, illustrating the number of people on the service and their progress through the pathway. Early research funded by NHSX shows this model of care has reduced mortality, length of hospital stay, intensive care admissions and readmissions.

More information: Covid Oximetry @home: evaluation of patient outcomes https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.29.21257899v1

Inhealthcare is an alumni company of the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator programme.

The DigitalHealth.London Accelerator is a collaborative programme funded by two of London’s Academic Health Science Networks – UCL Partners, and the Health Innovation Network, as well as MedCity, CW+ and receives match funding from the European Regional Development Fund.