If you’ve been following us lately you’ll know that we recently launched our novel suite of outcome measures: HEALTHSPAN!

We’re very excited about the potential HEALTHSPAN holds to help keep people healthy longer and make health systems more sustainable. We believe HEALTHSPAN is arguably one of the most important population outcomes that health and care systems should be measuring, so we’re delighted that its importance has been picked up by The Times. To read our full feature, see here.

“As we progress our plans to more integrated health and care services across England, I would encourage anyone involved in planning, paying for or delivering health services to start measuring HEALTHSPAN,” said Jonty Heaversedge, medical director for primary care and digital transformation at NHS England(London).

In case you missed what HEALTHSPAN is about, it is a novel suite of metrics that provide a unique way of measuring the health of a population that we’ve worked hard on refining. Discover more at humanhealthspan.com

On the day of the 70th birthday of the NHS, we were delighted to announce our latest and most exciting development (and the most important outcome) yet … HEALTHSPAN!

HEALTHSPAN is a suite of measures, focussing on the currently healthy population, that helps health and care systems measure how long they can support and help us stay healthy, for longer!

We know health systems largely focus on looking after people who are already experiencing ill health. But if health systems put a focus on increasing people’s HEALTHSPAN, people will be spending more of their lives in good health. Not only does giving people more years of good health improve their quality of life, it will also save the NHS money at the same time.

Read more about HEALTHSPAN and check out its brand new website here: www.humanhealthspan.com and follow us on twitter @humanhealthspan.

We are happy to announce that the Crown Commercial Service has awarded Outcomes Based Healthcare supplier status on the latest Digital Marketplace platform, G-Cloud 10!

The OBH Outcomes Platform is available as a Cloud Software Service and provides users with true health outcome measures at a population and cohort/condition level. The Outcomes Platform offers insights that can help drive clinical decisions, as well as support commissioning decisions for outcomes-based contracts.

In addition, OBH offers a range of support services via the Cloud Support Service framework – enabling clients to navigate the landscape of health and care outcomes and prepare them for seamless use of the OBH Outcomes Platform.

Population segment specific. Person-centred. Meaningful insights. Keeping people healthy longer. It’s all we do and love!
Find us on G-Cloud 10 for the OBH Outcomes Platform and Support Services.

Our awesome friends over at One HealthTech have been celebrating 70 years of the NHS by featuring one profile a day of 70 people spearheading innovation in the NHS leading up to the NHS birthday!

OBH’s very own co-founder/CTO Nasrin , senior analyst Ellie , and advisory board member Pam Garside , were all featured! With such great backgrounds and pioneering work, we can’t help but be inspired by them and motivated to improve healthcare.

To see other profiles featured in 70healthtech, see here.

CEO Rupert recently wrote an article featured in the Future Healthcare Journal, “Paying for what matters most: the future of outcomes-based payments in healthcare.” With debates on how to implement outcomes-based approaches increasing, Rupert addresses many of the surrounding questions, problems with the status quo, and how we can get outcomes-based payments off the ground.

It is already clear that outcomes tend to be more stable over time than quality process measures. Nobody with diabetes wants a stroke now, or in ten years time. But new population metrics are required for us to create healthy and financially sustainable health systems. As Rupert puts it, “Unless improvements in life expectancy are more than matched by improvements in people’s ‘healthspans’, then lifetime costs of care will only continue to escalate unsustainably. However, it is extremely hard to improve what is not measured. In this context, the need to develop and agree on a definitive, population-level measure of ‘healthspan’ has never been more pressing.”

Measures that reflect the proportion of a person’s life span which is spent predominantly healthy would make excellent markers of the success of primary prevention, and are essential to the achieving sustainability of health and care systems. Read more of what Rupert has to say on it here.

Presenting at this year’s UK e-Health week was our COO Juliana, speaking to the subject of “Owning it: by the people for the people, are value based care systems possible?”

Discussing crucial matters surrounding value based systems, Juliana highlighted how the current national frameworks were not designed for outcomes based commissioning, often using only single care setting datasets, with annual aggregate figures, that often have a long timelag to publication. To succeed in outcomes based models, we need to use local linked datasets across all care settings, and provide an independent view of that information to all providers. Outcomes based commissioning is possible, but only if a single definition of value is agreed upon.

Still skeptical about outcomes? Read our Outcomes Myths to debunk some other outcome misconceptions and understand our take on them.

We are delighted to have been chosen by Pfizer as a top 10 finalist in their second year of the ‘Healthcare Hub’. The Healthcare Hub is dedicated to supporting digital healthcare and achieving better health outcomes in the UK – just like us! We are very excited about this opportunity and what it could hold for the future of OBH, stay tuned!

This latest Westminster Health Forum Keynote Seminar was tackling ‘Priorities for improving payment systems and reimbursement in healthcare’.

Talking about payment for outcomes, Rupert spoke to the topic of ‘Priorities for tariff system reform: appropriate incentives, data use and developing independent oversight’. Rupert described how we need a future currency which expands across the care cycle, with mandatory outcomes monitoring and preferably an element of payment for outcomes. Only focusing on outcome measurement for single conditions ignores the ‘healthy’ segment of our population and misses the opportunity to focus on keeping them healthy! Outcomes are a stable currency and a payment mechanism that actually fosters innovation.

With the day being centred on improving payment systems, it was an excellent opportunity for us to showcase our work. At OBH we are changing the way healthcare is paid for. We are committed to supporting sustainable healthcare, and transforming the way healthcare measures and funds success, to those things that matter to people, and our Outcomes Platform lets us do just that. OBH’s Digital Outcomes Platform enables powerful insights into outcomes data through intuitive visualisations of outcomes data for dynamic populations. To read more about it, see here.

LaingBuisson, health and social care market intelligence providers, recently hosted their annual Social Care Conference. Rupert was a panellist on the topic “Outcomes-based commissioning – is this the future for publicly funded, outsourced services?” With many attendees consisting of senior policy makers, providers, regulators, and investors, we were happy to be in good company, engaging in conversations important to us.

Our CEO Rupert was recently interviewed for an article in the The Times. Talking about value based healthcare and it’s need in the UK, Rupert says “We are very good at spending money on doing things, at operating on people and prescribing tablets. But we are quite weak at knowing whether it has made any difference whatsoever. Has it really impacted some-one’s life? Is their quality of life better? Is their mobility better? Their pain?”

We can put the focus back on the patient with value-based healthcare and can make progress towards a more sustainable system where we measure and pay for success based on those outcomes that matter to people.

We are delighted with the attention value based approaches are getting and are always ready to talk about it! Click here to read the article, or download the full Future of Healthcare supplement here.

Earlier this March, WIRED Health hosted their annual healthcare conference to challenge the health industry to transform. WIRED Health covers a great span of topics and themes, with the underlying goal being to help inspire and facilitate change in the health sector. OBH was happy to participate in this year’s WIRED Health Startup Showcase, with our co-founder Juliana taking the lead to discuss outcomes as a currency to pay for prevention and data for better outcomes.

We’re delighted WIRED Health listed us a healthcare startup people should know about. Check out the list here.

Our own co-founder and CTO, Nasrin, has joined the Reform advisory board! Reform is a think tank addressing issues relevant to improving public service performance within affordable budgets – something we are passionate about in regards to health and social care at OBH!

With an invaluable combination of entrepreneurial, technology and healthcare experience, we think she’ll fit right in!

Pam Garside is joining our advisory board and we are absolutely delighted!

Pam has her own management consultancy specialising in organisational strategy and development in health care, and is a Fellow of the Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge. She advises new entrants to the UK health market including digital and start up companies and is an angel investor.

Pam founded and co-chairs The Cambridge Health Network and sits on the Investment Committee of Cambridge Enterprise. In 2016 Pam was named one of the 100 most influential leaders in Health Tech by Hot Topics.

Read more about her ventures here.

With technology rapidly advancing, the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare are increasing. Used effectively, AI can be a key tool in helping health services to deliver better outcomes.

Reform recently published a paper “Thinking on its own: AI in the NHS,” supported by our CTO, Nasrin, on the paper’s advisory board. The report describes areas where AI can help the NHS deliver better outcomes, highlights the barriers to implementation along with solutions, and sets out recommendations for AI in the NHS.

AI could reduce the demand on the system, but it’s not going to happen overnight. The authors state that, “the NHS ‘has a long way to go before AI can be effectively leveraged’. Both buy-in from patients and healthcare professionals needs to improve. This will be a factor of time for people to trust this technology and will also partly depend on the AI interface design and explainability. Increasing the user-friendliness and having a clear understanding of human-computer interaction can influence the adoption rate of this technology amongst healthcare professionals.”

To read more on AI in the NHS, see here.

OBH CEO Dr Rupert Dunbar-Rees was selected as an NIA Fellow in 2016. He was invited to attend this year’s NIA Summit and Launch where the new fellows were annouced, forming a full cohort of 25, where Rupert also won the prestigious award of Best Participant! We’re extremely proud of Rupert and OBH’s work since being selected into the NIA. Rupert joined a panel advising the new fellows on critical success factors in scaling their innovations. This year’s fellows are spearheading innovations in mental health, urgent and emergency care, and primary care. We look forward to following their journeys.

Since being selected by the NIA, OBH has: gained supplier status on G-Cloud 9, travelled to Brazil as part of the NHS Digital trade mission and Hospitalar Conference, worked with a leading global pharmaceutical/life sciences company to develop outcomes-based commissioning solutions, secured our first US client, and secured a £150K Innovate UK grant for a ‘Real World Outcomes’ project.

Our co-founder and CTO, Nasrin, who is a medical doctor by background, was recently invited as a panellist to the Doctorpreneurs start-up school. The event was aimed at entrepreneurial doctors, medical students and others interested in healthcare entrepreneurship, health technology, and innovation. The start-up school is centred on sharing advice and key insights from successful doctors turned entrepreneurs. Nasrin spoke on bringing digital health product ideas to market, how to evaluate the market, define the problem, and barriers she faced in her journey.

For more information, see here.

EHI Live is a prominent event for digital health and healthcare innovation and we were grateful to present there this year. Rupert spoke to a crowd of CIOs, CEOs, and Board Members, on segmentation and analytics to understand population level outcomes and value.

For successful outcomes based approaches, we need to identify groups of people with similar needs because different population groups need to be responded to in different ways. Getting this segmentation right allows you to achieve the best health outcomes and minimize health care costs – something we pride ourselves in at OBH!

Exciting times ahead at OBH as we win grant funding from InnovateUK for a ‘Real World Outcomes’ feasability study. We will be testing the feasibility of a product to generate Real World Evidence for Life Science companies in pharmaceuticals and devices to test the ability to use existing healthcare and administrative data to measure the impact of an intervention, device, technology or drug, on health outcomes.

Why is it needed?

• Innovations and tech interventions want to measure the impact their service/product has on people’s outcomes
• Pharmaceuticals increasingly needing to show Real World evidence (RWE) of impact, post licensing surveillance, and as a condition of regulatory/licensing approval
• Move from payment for each pill to payment for outcomes
• NHS providers asked to improve outcomes under new outcomes-based contracts are looking at which interventions can have the most impact

We are very excited for this opportunity because by driving the system value of pharmaceuticals and devices, we can create system efficiencies and hopefully ease demands of services.