Blog

Huma’s collaborative Covid-19 project wins HSJ Value Award

First published:
September 8, 2021
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2
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Author:
Schalk Blom

On Thursday 2nd September, alongside our team of collaborators, we were honoured with an HSJ Value Award for our North-West London Covid-19 primary care project. Using our ‘hospital at home’ technology, we worked with North West London Clinical Commissioning Groups, Hillingdon GP Confederation, Central London Healthcare CiC, Imperial College Healthcare Trust, NHSX and AstraZeneca Digital Health Team to support NHS clinicians and patients through the pandemic.

In response to the unprecedented challenges posed by the first wave of Covid-19 on hospital resources, we joined with CCGs in North-West London (NWL) to design and pilot ‘virtual wards’. Together, the teams involved in this project enabled better patient care, doubled clinical capacity and improved access for patients presenting with moderate Covid-19 symptoms.

The aim of the project was to help clinicians safely monitor patients in the community with scaled-up primary care hubs, which provided remote patient monitoring through phone calls and/or the Huma smartphone app. The project was launched in Hillingdon and Central London CCGs initially (covering ~730k patients), and was successfully scaled across the NWL Integrated Care System, covering 2.4 million people. Our work has been replicated nationally and internationally across Germany and is now being extended to patients with long-term comorbidities in the UK, Europe, Middle East and soon Africa.

It is incredibly rewarding to be formally recognised for this project with a prestigious HSJ Value Award and huge congratulations need to go to all our partners who made this award-winning project possible, in particular Dr Kuldhir Johal, Dr Tony Willis, Dr Afsana Safa and Dr Simon Gordon. We attended the award ceremony in Manchester where we were surrounded by organisations and individuals who are also making an outstanding commitment to clinical excellence and operational improvements across healthcare.

The success of this collaborative project has shown the value of digital technologies in supporting healthcare systems, particularly at times when resources are stretched. We are committed to continuing to develop and scale up our remote patient monitoring platform to help people all over the world live longer, fuller lives.

Thank you and congratulations to all our partners on this project.

To find out more about the 2021 HSJ Value Awards, visit: https://value.hsj.co.uk/winners-2021