Major new NHS Test Bed announced for the West of England

Patients in the West of England will be among the first to benefit from a major new drive to modernise how the NHS delivers care, NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens announced on Friday 22 January at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The West of England AHSN will be leading the way in NHS innovation as part of a pioneering ‘Test Bed’ with partners including the regional healthcare community, Corsham Institute, Diabetes UK, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Ki Performance, LeLan and SocialDiabetes, R-Outcomes, Soupdragon Resources and HEOR.

As part of the ‘Diabetes Digital Coach’ Test Bed, people with diabetes and frontline health and care workers across the West (with a population size of 2.4 million) will pioneer and evaluate opportunities to work with the ‘Internet of Things’ through using remote monitoring and coaching technology for better self-management.

This first wave of NHS Innovation ‘Test Beds’, collaborations between the NHS and innovators, including Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences), IBM and Philips, aim to harness technology to address some of the most complex issues facing patients and the health service.

Frontline health and care workers in seven areas will pioneer and evaluate the use of novel combinations of interconnected devices such as wearable monitors, data analysis and ways of working which will help patients stay well and monitor their conditions themselves at home.

Successful innovations will then be available for other parts of the country to adopt and adapt to the particular needs of their local populations.

The plans include:

• Patients with diabetes in the West of England being equipped with remote monitoring and coaching technology to allow them to better self-manage their condition
• Older patients in Rochdale who are most at risk of critical health events being identified using data analysis, and supported to use telecare and remote devices in their homes so that their doctors can provide timely and tailored help as soon as they need it
• People in Birmingham at risk of serious mental illness will be able to make use of technology and apps to manage their condition, linked to a hub which can despatch the right specialist staff at the right time to help if a crisis looks likely.

Addressing the 46th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, which is themed ‘Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution’, Simon Stevens said:

“Over the next decade major health gains won’t just come from a few ‘miracle cures’, but also from combining diverse breakthroughs in fields such as biosensors, medtech and drug discovery, mobile communications, and AI computing. Our new NHS Test Beds programme aims to cut through the hype and test the practical benefits for patients when we bring together some of these most promising technologies in receptive environments inside the world’s largest public, integrated health service.”

A joint programme between NHS England, the Office for Life Science, the Department of Health and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, NHS Test Beds will bring together local health bodies including CCGs, hospital trusts, primary and community care providers with a wide range of innovators from home and abroad.

Life Sciences Minister George Freeman MP said:

“We are determined to ensure the NHS can remain a pioneer of new treatments and models of care so that UK patients will be amongst the first in the world to benefit from these hugely exciting medical advances, made possible by the life sciences industry in partnership with the NHS. Not only does it demonstrate the NHS’s attractiveness as a place to test and develop revolutionary new products, it is also another important step towards creating a truly twenty-first century NHS.”

Each Test Bed will use a different combination of innovations, from both large and small organisations, to address a locally-identified clinical challenge.

These challenges include supporting people with diabetes and other long term conditions to manage their care better; supporting older people to stay independent at home; better support for people at risk of mental health crisis, and; improving how we predict care needs for both individuals and local populations.

The changes made will be rigorously evaluated, with the aim to provide evidence which will give more areas the confidence to adopt the innovations over the coming years.

The first wave of Test Beds includes five health and care Test Beds and two ‘Internet of Things’ Test Beds. The sites will be spread across different areas of England, including the West of England, Surrey, Sheffield and Birmingham.

The five NHS Test Beds chosen are:

• Care City Health and Care Test Bed – which will promote healthy ageing across a million-strong population in North East London. Bringing together UCLPartners, Health Analytics, Orion Health and 9 other innovators, the partnership will test and evaluate combinations of innovative technologies that can help patients to manage their own health conditions and to remain as independent as possible, supported by carers who will receive the information and connections they need coordinate care. For example, this will include an online tool for those with dementia, a social network app which offers peer-to-peer support safely online with guidance from credible organisations and institutions, and a device which assesses falls risk and mobility.
• Long Term Conditions Early Intervention Programme – which will see the NHS in Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale working with Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences), MSD (a trade name of Merck & Co., Inc., with headquarters in Kenilworth, NJ, USA), Health E Research and the Greater Manchester Academic Health Science Network to help healthcare professionals better identify and support patients at risk of long term conditions using the most advanced new predictive techniques. This will involve analysing trends and patterns related to conditions like heart failure and some lung diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease to identify patients who would most benefit from tele-health, tele-care and tele-medicine technology. These patients will benefit from a more personalised service, in particular being proactively offered additional physician support and access to technology.
• Lancashire and Cumbria Innovation Alliance (LCIA) Test Bed – which will see the NHS, including two New Care Model Vanguard sites, partner with Philips and a number of SMEs and social enterprises to support the frail elderly and people with long term conditions to remain well outside of hospital and avoid unnecessary admissions. They will test new approaches to identifying patients that can benefit from additional support and help them to self-care at home through improved education and telehealth technologies.
• Perfect Patient Pathway Test Bed – aims to create the ‘perfect patient pathway’ to bring substantial benefits for patients in the Sheffield City Region suffering from long term conditions, such as diabetes, mental health problems, respiratory disease, hypertension and other chronic conditions. The Test Bed will keep patients with long term conditions well, independent and avoiding crisis points which often result in hospital admission, intensive rehabilitation and a high level of social care support. Working in partnership with GE Finnamore, IBM and 13 smaller innovators, the local health and care system will set up an integrated intelligence centre to help get people the help they need, when they need it most.
• RAIDPlus Integrated Mental Health Urgent Care Test Bed – which will see Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust partner with Accenture to offer more proactive support for people at risk of mental health crisis. Patients across Birmingham and Solihull will have access to digital tools such as online support, risk assessments and crisis intervention plans that will enable care professionals to better support patients to manage their conditions in the community. In addition the Test Bed will use predictive analytics technology to better identify those at risk of crisis, enabling mobile crisis workers and tele-triage workers to provide prevention support before a crisis arises.

The two Internet of Things (IoT) Test Beds are:

• Diabetes Digital Coach – a project led by the West of England AHSN in partnership with Diabetes UK and technology companies including Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Bringing together mobile health self-management tools (wearable sensors and supporting software) with the latest developments in connecting monitoring devices (Internet of Things), the Test Bed will enable people with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes to ‘do the right thing at the right time’ to self-manage their condition. It will also encourage more timely and appropriate interventions from peers, healthcare professionals, carers and social networks.
• Technology Integrated Health Management (TIHM) – a collaboration between Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and an array of health technology providers which will help people with dementia to live in their own homes for longer. Individuals and their carers will be provided with sensors, wearables, monitors and other devices, which will combine into an ‘Internet of Things’ to monitor their health at home. This will empower people to take more control over their own health and wellbeing, as well as enabling health and social care staff to deliver more responsive and effective services.

The IoT Test Beds are part of IoTUK, an integrated £40 million, three-year Government programme that seeks to advance the UK’s global leadership in IoT and increase the adoption of high quality IoT technologies and services throughout businesses and the public sector.