UK digital health company launches Prevention Innovation Fund to support ICSs
Holly Health has announced a £320,000 fund, offering systems access to psychology-based digital health services, enabling system leaders to move forward with prevention initiatives.
Long-term conditions (LTCs), mental health challenges, and multimorbidity rates are rising, with lifestyle risk factors the biggest cause. This is impacting system costs (£18.4 billion, or over three quarters of NHS expenditure, is spent on long-term care per year) and workplace sickness (38 per cent of people of working age on long-term sickness, report having 5 or more LTCs). The vast majority of people living with these challenges currently get no tailored support for lifestyle health improvement.
Holly Health has today announced a £320,000 Prevention Innovation Fund, offering up to four integrated care systems (ICSs) (or equivalents in Scotland and Wales) up to £80,000 credit each towards deploying a proven, psychology-based digital health coaching service, to increase self-management support across their region.
The goal of the fund is to help NHS system leaders to move forward with large scale prevention initiatives efficiently, supporting progress towards the three new UK healthcare strategy ‘shifts’, from treatment to prevention, hospital to community and analogue to digital.
Holly Health is a fully digital, yet personalised, health coaching service which supports patients to develop sustainable health habits across mental and physical health and most lifestyle risk factors.
Backed by the NHS Innovation accelerator, and with more than 200 GP practices partnerships around the UK, Holly Health outcomes show significant average health improvements across areas like exercise, mental wellbeing, weight and blood pressure. Additionally, GP appointments show consistent reductions after using Holly Health, especially in more frequent service users.
Steve Woodford, NHS Non-Executive Director at NHS England, said: “The NHS has an opportunity to shift towards a proactive, preventive and personalised care system, with the help of technology. Services like Holly Health can help to drive these changes affordably and efficiently. This is a great opportunity for ICB teams, enabling scalable self-management support for people living with or at risk of long-term conditions.”
There are two main ways in which ICSs will be able to launch Holly Health at scale. One is via traditional routes, deploying Holly Health via primary care and public health services. The second, a route fit for the future NHS, is to launch Holly Health to members of the public, via the NHS App, made possible by a brand-new collaboration between Holly Health and Patients Know Best, also announced today.
Patients Know Best (PKB) is the UK’s leading personal health record platform, enabling patients to access and contribute to their health records using the PKB website and via the NHS App. The new Holly Health and PKB integration allows the Holly Health digital health coaching service, and PKB records to ‘speak’ to each other, so that members of the public can transfer blood pressure readings and lifestyle health data into their personal records. ICS teams will also have the new opportunity to reveal access to Holly Health coaching, via PKB and the NHS app, supporting the government’s vision for a single place for people to manage their health.
Grace Gimson, chief executive at Holly Health, said: “We’re extremely excited to make this double announcement: the launch of our Prevention Innovation Fund, and go-live of our partnership with PKB. Both have the potential to drive huge systemic changes in UK healthcare, driving prevention and personalised patient care forward, at population scale.”
Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, chief executive at PKB, said: “Holly Health’s pioneering approach to preventative care, perfectly complements PKB’s mission of empowering patients with their health data. Together, we’re creating a seamless experience where patients can proactively manage their wellbeing and maintain a complete, holistic view of their health, all in one place to share with whoever they need to.”
ICSs, and their equivalents in Scotland and Wales, wishing to find out more about the Prevention Innovation Fund, and to apply, should contact hello@hollyhealth.io.
Catherine Davies, Director of Digital Healthcare Council, commented: “Holly Health’s new Innovation Fund is a great opportunity for NHS systems to deploy evidence-based solutions at scale. Their digital health coaching helps accelerate the Government’s three shifts, particularly from treatment to prevention, delivering measurable outcomes for the NHS while empowering patients to take control of their health.”
