NHS collaborates with digital health innovator to help oesophageal cancer patients

A new smart phone app and web portal to help oesophageal cancer patients and their carers understand and manage their journey better has been launched in a new collaboration between DigitalHealth.London Accelerator alumnus Living With, UCL, and University College London Hospital (UCLH).

The personalised service, is being piloted by Barnet Hospital, part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, and will allow Clinical Nurse Specialists to have more time to monitor patients’ progress, provide relevant information and improve the care they can offer.

In London a new care pathway, which has better outcomes, exists for people with oesophageal cancer living in the north, central and east London Cancer Alliance. Surgery is performed by a single ‘high volume’ specialist centre based at University College Hospital (UCH), with supportive care delivered by local hospitals.

The app and web portal will support patients on this new pathway, and will enable Clinical Nurse Specialists to focus more of their expertise on patients with the greatest need. Clinical Nurse Specialists will be more easily able to connect to and monitor patients, share information and improve the timeliness of interventions. Patients will receive accurate, reliable, and easily comprehensible health information conveniently, confidentially, and in a timely manner.

Patients have reported good experiences with the app so far, with Lizzie Lloyd-Dehler, cancer survivor, saying, “I have used it [the app] every day and find it all and more than I wished for.”

Chris Robson, CEO of Living With, said, “After 18 months of careful design and development in collaboration with a wide range of multi-disciplinary stakeholders from UCL, UCLH and Macmillan, including substantive input from patients and healthcare professionals, it’s great to see Living With Oesophageal Cancer going live in a hospital. This is the fifth product on our condition management platform now in the NHS and we are looking forward to seeing the results of the pilot.”

Professor Elizabeth Murray, Head of the Research Department of Primary Care and Population Health and Co-Director, eHealth Unit, UCL said, “This is an exciting project, driven by cancer clinicians and patients, which has the potential to improve patient health outcomes and experience while reducing CNS workload and saving money for the NHS.”

Professor Muntzer Mughal, Honorary Clinical Professor and Consultant UGI Surgeon, UCLH, said, “This is an exciting project. The product will allow patients to access information and advice tailored to their condition and access to the Clinical Nurse Specialists through the App. The App will also enable the clinicians to track the progress of their patients and to interact with them with advice and information and reminders about tests and appointments.”

Notes to Editors

• For more information or to speak to the researchers involved, please contact, Chris Robson, CEO, Living With on + 44 203 141 0777 or robson@livingwith.health
• Living With is an award-winning digital health company and developers of the top paid medical app in the UK, Squeezy. The Living With condition management platform enables clinicians to connect to their patients and monitor their conditions remotely while saving costs and improving outcomes. The Living With platform currently has five live products; Squeezy, the UK’s top paid medical app; Living With Pelvic Health, Living With Rheumatoid Arthritis, Living With Pregnancy Pain and Living With Oesophageal Cancer. The products are live across seventeen NHS trusts and ten private clinics. There are five further products in development.