Sexual well being software program supplier, Inform Well being is asserting a collection of enhancements to its HIV providing forward of the British HIV Affiliation (BHIVA) Spring Convention in Gateshead subsequent week.
Designed to avoid wasting clinic assets and enhance affected person expertise, Inform’s patient-facing Private Well being Report (PHR) will quickly facilitate enhanced affected person self-management, together with pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) eligibility assessments. Moreover, new developments to the HIV system will allow quicker, extra full and extra dependable CD4 and viral load HARS information reporting.
Inform Health’s on-line affected person self-management instruments are already being utilized in sexual well being companies to facilitate self-managed appointment reserving, triage and on-line testing. The instruments additionally embrace an eligibility evaluation for chlamydia therapy self-administration.
The brand new enhancements will allow companies to ask sufferers to finish a self-taken historical past – corresponding to present remedy, allergy, and menstrual cycle info – previous to their clinic attendance. They are going to be recorded in real-time, straight into the clinic’s Digital Affected person Report (EPR) system. Clinicians can assessment what the affected person has entered alongside the affected person’s current EPR file in a cut up display, and merge related information the place applicable. This new performance will optimise clinic appointments, saving time and empowering clinicians to extend the standard of the time spent with sufferers.
Components of the PHR’s self-taken historical past have been used to create new PrEP performance, designed to enhance PrEP entry. Sufferers requesting a PrEP initiation appointment reply to a self-assessment. The affected person is then signposted to related info and steering, whereas their responses are assessed previous to an invite by way of their PHR to ebook an appointment. This pre-attendance evaluation stage will assist companies to watch demand, enhance useful resource allocation and, crucially, save time throughout affected person consultations. As soon as eligibility is established, sufferers will be capable of self-manage their PrEP continuation, together with appointment reserving on the click on of a mouse. This can improve autonomy and comfort, while additional lowering stress on companies and supporting the onward transmission goal of 0 by 2030.
Sensible implementation
Oxfordshire Sexual Well being Service is at present working with Inform Well being to harness the brand new PrEP performance. The service’s advisor sexual well being medical lead, Emily Lord, believes such digital applied sciences have gotten more and more necessary for sufferers and suppliers throughout all healthcare settings, notably following the Covid-19 pandemic. She stated: “Oxfordshire Sexual Well being Service is working with Inform Well being to develop an area ‘Categorical PrEP service’. This new digital service will streamline the affected person journey for each initiating and persevering with PrEP, making it less complicated and extra environment friendly. It could additionally cut back obstacles to accessing repeat PrEP prescriptions, enhancing affected person engagement and adherence to PrEP.
“On the service stage, it would permit us to make sure that we use the experience of our clinicians effectively, guaranteeing sufferers with medical problems, or these unable to make use of our digital companies, are seen by skilled clinicians in face-to-face clinics.”
Moreover, for patrons with an digital laboratory feed, Inform Well being is at present testing new performance to routinely populate CD4 and viral load info required for HARS reporting. Developed with a number of current NHS clients, the performance will take away the necessity for guide entry by clinicians or clerical workers. As a substitute, the automated HARS performance will cascade outcomes information seamlessly from lab techniques into the proper affected person file; saving time and assets and creating extra dependable and full HARS datasets.
Commenting on the brand new developments, Inform Well being industrial director, Sue Bunn, stated: “After years of elevated demand, together with the continued fallout from the Mpox outbreak, many sexual well being and HIV companies throughout the UK are struggling to cope with backlogs and maintain tempo with that demand.
“It has all the time been our mission to grasp the obstacles to offering environment friendly, protected, and low-cost service supply and to make use of our technical experience to engineer efficient, progressive options to those obstacles,” she added.
