Article | Igniting the healthcare revolution

Dr Ian Wood, a GP and clinical director for Optum (formerly EMIS), explores how technology could be implemented to drive proactive, preventative care within our healthcare system to reduce health inequalities and improve patient outcomes at a national scale.

As healthcare demands continue to surge, innovation is an ever-pressing necessity. At the heart of this transformation lies a precious resource, capable of revolutionising care delivery: data.

Data is the lifeblood of the NHS, where every patient interaction, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome flows with meticulous detail into vast digital repositories. Yet the true potential of this wealth of information remains largely untapped.

Conversations around the use of health data are nothing new. It’s been the subject of countless articles, papers, and discussions for many years now, precisely because so many of us are acutely aware of the immense potential it holds. But thanks to the huge advances in digital technology in the last few years, we now stand at a critical juncture where fundamental changes to healthcare delivery could make or break our healthcare system.

Right now, primary care is facing a workforce and workload crisis, where reactive care delivery has us stretched to our limit. But it is within primary care data where lies the richest opportunities for optimising care and finding at-risk patients. We now have the technology that can identify and lift those patients that would benefit from additional interventions out of the exhausted primary care system and bring them to teams with the agency and capacity to provide a specific area of care.

Case finding for proactive intervention

Our Pathway solution demonstrates the real-world impact of these technologies in reducing health inequalities and supporting new ways of working between primary and secondary care. Piloted in 2023 as part of the Hepatitis C (HCV) elimination programme, Pathway was deployed to effectively identify patients for lifesaving treatments.

Leveraging the data held within primary care clinical systems, Pathway enables healthcare teams to identify cohorts of at-risk patients for proactive testing, diagnosis and treatment. This solution is empowering healthcare teams to deliver early interventions in the most appropriate setting, making it easier for capacity and resource to be shared across organisations, and ultimately driving improved outcomes.

Hepatitis C elimination

Working to eliminate Hepatitis C as a major public health issue in England, the NHS England (NHSE) Hepatitis C (HCV) elimination programme has seen a huge success since inception, with 37% reduction in deaths from the virus, 52% reduction in the number of liver transplants, and more than 80,000 patients successfully treated. As NHSE progress toward their elimination goals, they believe a final cohort of patients are still yet to be reached – and a significant number could be found through primary care data.

A partnership between Optum, NHSE and Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) enabled an innovative new approach to this challenge. Deploying the ‘Patient Search Identification’ (PSI) tool developed by MSD into the Pathway solution allowed Cheshire and Merseyside Operational Delivery Network (ODN) to search primary care data for coded Hepatitis C risk factors in patient records, and identify potentially at-risk patients for review, testing and treatment.

The power of Pathway

Piloting Pathway with four GP practices in their local area earlier this year, Cheshire and Merseyside ODN identified 583 patients from a list size of just over 24,000 that met the risk factor criteria in the Pathway search. 534 of this group had high risk factors associated with Hepatitis C, whilst 49 had a confirmed diagnosis of the virus with no recorded treatment in their primary care record.

Of the 49 diagnosed with no recorded treatment, 40 patients have now had their records updated to accurately reflected that they had been treated and cleared their virus. All the remaining nine patients were tested, with two testing positive who have been offered treatment by the ODN team.

Of the patients identified by Pathway with high risk factors, 503 have been contacted via SMS, and 79 have requested a HCV test via the NHS portal. So far one patient recorded a positive test and has gone on to receive treatment as a direct result of this pilot.

The ODN team commented “Overall, we have found this to be a very positive experience. We have identified and subsequently treated patients with HCV who would not have otherwise come into contact with the existing branches of our HCV service. We have already commenced the enrolment of our next group of GP practices and hope eventually to have utilised Pathway for every centre across the wider region”.

Data driven design

Deriving true value from data requires tools that can transform the scattered puzzle pieces into a coherent picture. Solutions like Pathway show us what can be achieved when we leverage healthcare data to work smarter and more efficiently, enabling opportunities to proactively intervene at the right time and in the right setting.

In harnessing this resource, healthcare providers can better identify trends, anticipate health risks, and intervene early, ultimately leading to improved health outcomes and a more sustainable healthcare system. We can enable equitable access to care, and invest resource where it’s truly needed, backed by evidence and data.

Investing in these technologies will enable us to shift healthcare delivery from reactive to preventative – enabling us to not only improve individual lives, but to revolutionise the global healthcare paradigm.

This article was originally published here.