Howz one of four digital healthcare projects supporting the COVID-19 response awarded a share of £200,000 through Health Innovation Manchester Momentum Fund
The Health Innovation Manchester Momentum Fund was established to support the introduction and adoption of needs-led, evidence-based innovations into the healthcare system within Greater Manchester.
Projects applied for up to £75,000 to support the development of their healthcare innovations within Greater Manchester and East Cheshire
Four solutions addressing priority areas for the COVID-19 pandemic response have received funding to accelerate their innovation
ARTIFICIAL Intelligence to support patients to manage their diabetes, a Clinical Decision Platform to help with earlier discharges from the Emergency Department and an online system to match clinician availability to patient needs in real-time were among four winners set to receive a share of £200,000 to improve health and care in Greater Manchester.
The Momentum Fund was established to support the introduction and adoption of needs-led, evidence-based innovations into the healthcare system within Greater Manchester.
This year, the fund sought innovations focussed on two themes – Urgent and Emergency Care and Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, nutrition or obesity (Cardiometabolic needs). Projects applied for up to £75,000 to help accelerate their innovations.
The four projects to receive funding will all support the response to COVID-19 by supporting people with long-term conditions, matching clinicians to patient need, reducing readmissions to hospital or optimising patient pathways and improving efficiency in emergency care.
Health Innovation Manchester, the organisation responsible for accelerating proven innovation into Greater Manchester’s health and social care services, selected the winners of the Momentum Fund with the help of a panel of representatives from patients and partners.
Through the fund, Health Innovation Manchester aims to improve the health of our citizens and promote economic development and wealth creation through the growth of local businesses and jobs.
Richard Deed, Associate Director for Industry at Health Innovation Manchester, said: “This year we received more high-quality applications than ever before for our Momentum funding call.
“We began the process before the current COVID-19 pandemic began, but we have been impressed by how these innovative digital tools will be able to support the response to the crisis by keeping people healthy at home to reduce hospital admissions or improving care pathways within emergency care.
“We look forward to working with them during this challenging period to support the system, improve the health and wellbeing of our citizens and boost the local economy.”
Dr Paula Bennett, Associate Director of Clinical Development and Utilisation Management (UM) Unit, was part of the team assessing the Momentum fund applications.
Dr Bennett said: “Supporting urgent and emergency care and the wider health and care system has never been more important than the during the current pandemic. These projects and innovations can undoubtedly support urgent and emergency care by ensuring people can get the right care at the right time and in the right place, including delivering care in the home or as close to home as possible.”
Nick Filer, a member of the Health Innovation Manchester Public and Communities Involvement and Engagement Panel, also supported the assessment process including reviewing the shortlisted projects and providing their views on how much each innovation could help patients and members of the public.
Nick said: “It is a real honour to be chosen to represent millions of people in Greater Manchester and a great responsibility. The excitement of seeing a range of innovative ideas most of which I would not have consciously considered without involvement in processes such as the Momentum fund is special.”
He added that he was treated as a full member of the interview panel and asked patient-oriented and analytic questions to ensure that he understood the claims made for each proposal.
He continued: “Members of the public bring a different non-professional viewpoint to decisions about new health care projects. We patients will be the end users/customers of the funded proposals and can bring our lived experiences and community background to the table. I really did feel that my views and those of patients who I was representing alongside were sufficiently and fairly considered as part of the process.”
Winners
Cambio CDS T-MACS awarded £50,000
Chest pain is one of the most common reasons for hospital admission for patients presenting at the Emergency Department, but many of these admissions could be safely avoided with improved diagnostic technology to rapidly rule out acute coronary syndromes (ACS) such as heart attack. Several clinical studies and real-world evaluations show that the Troponin-only Manchester Acute Coronary Syndrome (T-MACS) decision aid accurately identifies those at low risk of heart attack, allowing for more patients to be discharged early. The funding will be used in collaboration with e-healthcare company Cambio CDS and their Open-Standards Clinical Decision Support platform. The project will develop and pilot an online app platform for T-MACS within the workflow to allow clinicians to calculate the risk, review recommended a course of action and save data for future T-MACS related research.
Professor Richard Body, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Honorary Lecturer in Cardiovascular Medicine at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This collaboration with Cambio CDS is crucial to ensure that our current endeavours remain fully compliant with changing regulations and to make the project scalable. The platform provided by Cambio CDS would enable hospitals across the world to rapidly adopt efficient clinical pathways to care for patients with chest pain, optimising patient care and reducing unnecessary use of precious healthcare resources.”
Dr Rong Chen, Cambio CDS CEO, said: “As Cambio CDS we are very pleased to have this opportunity to continue working with the NHS. Professor Body’s T-MACS solution is a wonderful application that has real impact for patient care and reducing unnecessary hospital admissions. We look forward to continue working with Professor Body and his team to ensure that T-MACS is seamlessly embedded in the Hospital System workflow with our EHR independent Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Solution.”
Doc Abode awarded £50,000
Doc Abode is a workforce deployment solution that enables healthcare providers to expand additional workforce capacity, improve operational resilience and efficiency by allocating work to healthcare professionals (HCPs) at an individual patient level, in real-time, based on HCP's availability, proximity and expertise. The platform can support employed, bank staff, locums and the self-employed. Doc Abode can be used to deploy any other workforce such as social prescribers, phlebotomists, healthcare assistants etc. The platform enables cross-organisational working by sharing a geographically dispersed clinical workforce centred around the real-time needs and requirements of NHS patients.
Doc Abode provides healthcare professionals with a secure app installed on their phones. Healthcare providers can 'push' home visit and telephone/video triage requests to them directly. They are informed of the travel time to the patient (if applicable), whether the patient is their own registered patient and whether it is a language or specialism match. If the job request is accepted, HCP are securely provided with further information about the patient so they can view and record the consultation in the electronic patient record (EPR). The funding will be used to demonstrate the impact at scale across a wider Greater Manchester footprint.
Dr Taz Aldawoud, Doc Abode CEO said: “We’re delighted to be a beneficiary of The Momentum Fund. From our early-stage roll outs, we have witnessed first-hand that this transformational way of working motivates clinicians to work flexibly and in addition to their usual shifts. We have demonstrated the impact that this is already having on providers’ home visiting services and more recently with secure telephony and video consultations, and the potential it has to deliver system-wide benefits. This funding enables us to further develop our data-driven approach, building on our evidence-based model in support of roll out to other NHS providers.”
Gendius diabetes AI development awarded £50,000
Gendius have developed the Intellin app, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to calculate an individual’s risk of developing complications from their diabetes based on their clinical history. The platform then provides clinically validated hints and tips to empower and educate the individual on how to manage these risks and reduce their risk of developing diabetes-related complications. The funding will be used to analyse consented patient data across 250 GPs/1000+ patients to help improve the app’s existing algorithms.
Rory Cameron, CEO Gendius, said: “Winning this Momentum grant from Health Innovation Manchester will enable us to better understand how metabolic markers change over a ten-year period in people with diabetes. With these data we will develop improved algorithms in our Intellin platform that will enable better understanding of how resources can be allocated to support the complications of diabetes. This is a game changer and a whole new way of looking at diabetes.”
Howz for Health awarded £50,000
Howz for Health have developed a smart home system kit designed for older people which can detect changes in daily routines, signalling a change in an individual's health. Family and staff can view the information and receive alerts of differences and deviations from the established routine and can intervene at an earlier stage. The funding will be used to evaluate the kit with 50 patients who have two or more conditions, live independently and have recently been discharged from hospital or identified as at high risk of admission. The system aims to reduce re-admissions and relieve pressures on the Urgent Care systems.
Two further successful projects in this year’s Momentum fund have been temporarily paused during COVID-19 and the projects will be revisited at a later date.
Ends
Media contact:
Lucy Williams, Senior Communications Officer
E: lucy.williams@healthinnovationmanchester.com
Notes to editors:
About Health Innovation Manchester
Health Innovation Manchester brings together health, academia and industry as part of an academic health science system with the aim of accelerating innovation to improve people’s health and wellbeing.
Our aim is to make Greater Manchester the most innovative health and social care system in the UK, a place internationally renowned for its ability to apply the skills of industry innovators, academic and clinical colleagues, to meet the needs of patients and citizens.
Visit healthinnovationmanchester.com or follow us on Twitter @healthinnovmcr
