As innovators across the world work at speed to identify, design and develop solutions to help fight coronavirus, our Chief Exec, John Craig’s latest blog introduces a great new health tech start up we are working with in East London to support Care Homes with their amazing work to keep their residents safe…
Any health think-tank or innovation team that cannot find a contribution to make – however modest – to the Covid-19 response should ask itself what it’s for. Maybe that’s too sweeping of others, but it’s true of Care City. We slightly fear the day there’s briefly nothing more we can do. However, that day hasn’t come yet, and we will forestall it while we can. As Paul Corrigan our Chair insists, ‘working to create the future is fine- but now is the time for the future to come to the aid of the present’.
Some of our projects are paused, while others are accelerating or changing course to contribute. More on these soon. Our newest piece of work existed only as an ‘expression of interest’ to NHSX just a fortnight ago. Led by our partners, Feebris it has begun – with the support of Havering Care Homes and Havering Health – and we are racing to implement.
Feebris is an amazing start-up who began using a digital stethoscope and an algorithm to help community workers in India spot childhood pneumonia. Now the team are bringing that passion to democratise diagnostics to care homes here, to fight Covid-19. Their kit enables carers to collect observations and lung sounds, and shares them with GPs, enhancing the virtual ward rounds that are rapidly being established. And with doctors’ time so stretched, the Feebris tool flags patients’ health status, allowing them to focus where they can most help.
On Wednesday, the British Geriatrics Society published their new Covid-19 guidance for care homes. It highlights that care homes don’t habitually take observations, but that they ought to now. This project will enable these observations in thirteen homes in Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge. More than that, we hope it can create a leading example of how this approach dovetails with digital primary care, and harness AI to save time and serve patients.
As others are observing, parts of our health system are now shifting very fast. GPs have understandably felt that more channels of communication and more data mean more calls on their time. The intensity of this situation is changing that view. For GPs, opening up to observations from social care means these colleagues can do the leg work and they can offer advice and make decisions earlier and quicker. That has the potential to prevent inappropriate escalation and conveyance to hospital and ensure that we are all doing our best by every care home resident.
Care City is changing too. My rule is that projects need two things – a mission and money behind them. Apart from the hardware costs, this one only has a mission. But it’s an urgent mission, and if we don’t do it, what are we for?
