We were excited to pitch at the Osborne Clarke (OC) Digital Health Event, where 10 new and established companies pitched in ‘Dragons’ Den’ style to an audience of investors and digital health enthusiasts (who were much friendlier than the fire-breathing investors from the BBC show!).

Each audience member was given a generous amount of (fake) OC cash to ‘invest’ in a winner. We had a brilliant time meeting other innovators, healthcare enthusiasts and investors.

We’re delighted that OBH CEO Rupert has been selected to be a fellow of the 2016 NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA)!

NHS England Medical Director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh and US digital health expert Professor Robert Wachter revealed in November eight health innovations to join the NHS Innovation Accelerator for 2016. The innovations chosen include the OBH’s Outcomes Platform – a web-based product that measures whether care provided is making a meaningful difference to people’s lives.

The NIA is a programme set up by NHS England in partnership with 15 Academic Health Sciences Networks, and is designed to “support exceptional individuals with a passion for learning and a commitment to share their learnings widely, scaling evidence-based innovations for greater patient benefit.”

The key focus for OBH is to shift measurement and reimbursement away from simply volume of illness treated, towards improving people’s health. The OBH Outcomes Platform supports NHS commissioners and care providers, who are actively working towards building value-based healthcare models in their organisations. It enables health systems to organise care between different providers more effectively, around outcomes that are important for people. With NIA support we’re aiming to have the platform being used across the country, covering at least 10% of England’s population in the next year.

“Being selected by NHS England as one of its eight innovations for 2016 is a fantastic opportunity to move to rewarding NHS organisations not only for the great work they do to treat patients, but for the serious efforts being made to prevent serious adverse events,” said Dr Rupert Dunbar-Rees. “This reflects the huge amount of hard work the NHS is now putting into defining, measuring and paying for the things which actually matter to people.”

We very much look forward to working closely with both NIA mentors and our fellow NIA innovators in making healthcare work better for patients, watch this space!

You can find out more about the NIA, as well as information on past and present fellows here.

The OBH family is growing quickly! We’d like to extend a warm welcome to Nico, Aseem and Andrew – three new members of #teamOBH!

Nico brings a wealth of NHS experience from his roles as Head of Business Intelligence and Performance at Herts Valleys CCG, and Head of Informatics at East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust. He also has lots of experience outside the NHS – including in finance, retail and music. WIth a background in computer science, leadership and an MBA, we’re excited to have Nico’s expertise at OBH.

Aseem is a junior doctor based in Oxford, who is currently undertaking some exciting research in the field of radiology. He has been passionate about innovative ways to improve health outcomes since he was a medical student, and in addition to academia has worked in health strategy and government policy. Aseem is most excited by being able to complement his clinical duties by working on improving health outcomes on a wide scale.

Andrew joins us from Canada, where he was a senior analyst at University Health Network for four years. When not at OBH you will find Andrew travelling or at London Hackspace collaborating with others on a number of unique projects. We know how much Andrew loves to travel, and one of his first roles will be to represent OBH’s Sense 360 app at the World Innovation Summit for Health in Qatar.

More information on Nico, Aseem and Andrew, as well as the rest of the team can be found here.

OBH’s Sense360 app continues to generate buzz as it’s featured as one of the innovation showcases on display at this year’s World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH). WISH was launched in 2012 and serves to promote and facilitate innovation in healthcare across the world. This year’s Summit will take place 29th to 30th November at the Qatar National Convention Center, in Doha. The Sense360 app will be showcased with 20 other companies that represent some of the world’s most exciting healthcare innovations, ranging from practical devices and business models, to design-based solutions. The event will be attended by more than 1,000 global leaders, including government officials and healthcare experts to tackle the world’s most pressing healthcare challenges.

The Sense360 app has been featured in numerous articles and conferences, and recently won the Mobility Solution of the Year at the European IT and Software Excellence awards. It’s a research app that aims to continuously and passively measure health outcomes using smartphone sensor data. It was created in collaboration with SoftServe to help healthcare systems measure and pay for the value they provide.

“We hosted another Health Tech Dinner – and were delighted to be joined by friends from the following companies: Attain, ABC, ZPB, Aparito, Raremark, Accurx, Ctrl Group, Distillr, Ocushield, Results, Thriva, Wellvine, Medopad, Virgin, Hellopronto, the BMJ, Saatchi & Saatchi, Results International, Cydar, Number8, and Cox (amongst others!).

Along with catching up with old and new friends, we discussed some of the really tough questions in healthcare:

– How can we build innovative products or services that are truly disruptive, and are affordable and accessible, to improve health and care?
– Do we understand the real problems we face as a society, and how can we utilise technology to solve them?
– How can we sell our products or services to the NHS or any other healthcare system?

We enjoyed a thrilling talk from Chris Lewis, Partner at Results International who called on his immense experience in fundraising and exit strategies in healthcare.

No Tech Dinner would be complete without a 360 degree video – and our thanks go to Maneesh Juneja for recording this.

We very much look forward to the next one, watch this space!”