A new health services platform for patient centred and personalised care

We fully support Bisognano and Schummers’s well presented and timely article. The 2002 Wanless report made us realise that without a change in approach the NHS would become financially challenged and that we needed a way to engage patients. We decided to use an evidence based, patient centred approach to enable patients with long term conditions to take control of their health through shared decision making. Patients with long term conditions were seen in care planning clinics where they could speak about their problems, including social, health, and economic ones. Patients set their goals and action plans—guided and coached by the clinician—and took home a print out of their care plans. Analysis showed a 40% reduction of service utilisation costs in these patients.3 4 This test of the care planning approach shows that “flipping healthcare” works. However, large scale deployment of this approach presented organisational challenges. Turning digital, we incorporated the innovation into an internet delivered service called VitruCare, a scalable and integrated digital health services platform that can present different service packages to suit the patient. Patients can set goals, action plans, and see real time changes in their health status while connected to and coached by their clinician. Early outcome data show improvements in weight, blood pressure, and glycosylated haemoglobin through lifestyle changes. This type of approach provides a route for individuals, families, and communities to engage and enables the cultural change in approach that the NHS desperately needs to be reinvigorated and to thrive. We believe that patient centred and personalised care will become the norm across the health service—engaging and activating patients, as well as enabling proactive management and immediacy to deliver improved outcomes in both health and healthcare