A Brighton business, run by local medics, has won a national award for digital innovation after coming up with ways to help patients while reducing hospital attendance during the coronavirus pandemic.
Definition Health, a member of the Sussex Innovation Centre, in Falmer, created internet-based patient-friendly “end-to-end” apps to help before an operation, after surgery and with video consultations.
Awards organiser HTN (Health Tech Newspaper) said that Definition Health “prevents unnecessary hospital visits at the pre-assessment stage while ensuring valuable clinical capacity is reserved for those who need greater clinical support and intervention”.
HTN said: “The solutions focus on efficiency, reducing paper-based administration and reducing patient attendances, while increasing patient safety.
“Its virtual clinic module offers a video consultation function and a two-way file transfer (video, image, document) facility between patient and hospital.”
The three apps were created by clinicians for clinicians and called LifeBox ePOA, Secure Virtual Clinic and Recovery.
Definition Health was started by consultant orthopaedic surgeon Sandeep Chauhan, 53, and his wife Rosie Scott, 51, a local NHS consultant radiologist.
They are supported by a team of Sussex-based medical consultants and digital experts.
The apps are being used by nine hospitals across the country, private and NHS, and to date some 72,600 patients are being pre-assessed using Definition Health’s digital apps.
Dr Scott said: “We are absolutely delighted with this award which reflects the hard work of all the team at Definition Health and the hospitals who have worked with us to develop these technologies to become essential tools in increasing patient safety.
“With the coronavirus, we have witnessed the adoption of our pre-assessment app move forward by two years within a matter of weeks.
“And now hospital teams understand we cannot simply go back to lengthy face-to-face appointments and bringing patients into hospital to fill in forms.
“Using these apps, Definition Health has proven to efficiently refocus limited hospital resources and pre-assessment staff time, identified patients’ individual needs early on in their journey and offered substantial financial savings to NHS and private hospitals.”
A study estimated that the pre-op app, LifeBox ePOA, saved about £94,000 for every 5,000 patients and saved almost two hours on average for every patient.
The app was created three years ago and first trialled at the Montefiore Hospital in Hove.
The HTN Awards were held last week, on Thursday 7 October, and themselves took place virtually this year. The awards are aimed at sharing and celebrating digital teams, programmes, innovations and health tech suppliers who have made a difference.
