UK digital health company launches innovation fund for ICS

Digital health coaching service Holly Health has launched a £320,000 Prevention Innovation Fund, offering up to four ICS or equivalents in Scotland and Wales up to £80,000 credit towards deploying a proven, psychology-based digital health coaching service, to increase self-management support across their region.

 © Pexels/Pixabay

© Pexels/Pixabay

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.

Steve Woodford, 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 personal health record platform Patients Know Best (PKB).

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 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.'

Catherine Davies, director of Digital Healthcare Council, added: '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.'

ICS wishing to find out more about the Prevention Innovation Fund, and to apply, should contact hello@hollyhealth.io.

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