NHS expands remote monitoring across Scotland with support from Yorkshire-based Inhealthcare

A spokesman said: “To date, nearly 12,000 people have used earlier iterations of the pathways to support conditions including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, and undernutrition. The blood pressure monitoring service is expected to be one of the largest pathways of its kind and so far has supported more than 5,700 patients.“A growing number of patients are being offered Connect Me as a means to interact and communicate with their healthcare professionals. The programme enables people to have more choice and greater flexibility about how and where they manage their health and wellbeing.”The free programme is provided via mobile app, website, text message or automated phone call. The benefits for patients include less time spent attending and travelling to appointments and increased confidence to self-manage conditions and care. Benefits for clinicians include improved availability of data to support early intervention, more efficient use of resources and reduced hospital admissions.Bryn Sage, chief executive of Inhealthcare, said: “We are proud to be working alongside the team at NHS Scotland to help Scotland become an international leader in technology-enabled care, supporting more people to live longer, healthier lives at home or in community settings.“There are more than one million GP appointments per year in Scotland just for measuring blood pressure. By rolling out remote monitoring pathways for conditions such as hypertension, we are helping to create significant extra capacity within the healthcare system.”Inhealthcare announced in early 2022 it was the successful bidder for the NHS Scotland contract to support the scaling up and mainstreaming of remote patient monitoring services across Scotland.

An evaluation found that Scotland’s remote health pathway for people with Covid-19 symptoms improved access to NHS services and could be safely rolled out to help others.

Inhealthcare was founded in 2012 with the aim of helping to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the health service. It is part of Intechnology plc, a group of innovative tech companies owned by the award-winning Yorkshire entrepreneur Peter Wilkinson.