Huma acquires iPLATO Healthcare to enhance remote patient monitoring

Huma has acquired iPLATO Healthcare with the aim of bringing remote patient monitoring to the forefront of primary care.

The iPLATO patient engagement software covers a network of 26.6 million patients across nearly 3,000 NHS primary care organisations and their myGP app is one of the most downloaded medical apps in the UK.

The technology Huma provide has almost doubled clinical capacity through virtual wards and has assisted clinicians in spotting and reprioritising nearly 10% of their cardiac surgery patients on waiting lists whose conditions were worsening.

However, remote patient monitoring is still not widely used in primary care. Huma, formerly known as Medopad before rebranding themselves and buying wearable technology businesses BioBeats and TLT in April 2020, acquired iPLATO Healthcare to confirm their intent to change the role remote patient monitoring can play.

Dan Vahdat, CEO and founder of Huma, said: “We are part of the movement using remote patient monitoring and digital biomarkers to transform healthcare.

“We want to introduce digital screening and our peer-reviewed cardiovascular and depression risk scores to give patients even more insight into their own health.

“Adding these capabilities to iPLATO’s patient engagement expertise gives us a fantastic opportunity to make a significant difference in primary care and help more patients to live longer, fuller lives.”

iPLATO boasts over 10 years of experience in primary care management and has a strong user base. Nearly 2.4 million people in England use the myGP app to set medication reminders, track vital signs and order prescriptions which as a result has reduced unnecessary appointments, administrative tasks and pressure on primary care.

iPLATO has also been instrumental in increasing uptake of NHS services, including IAPT services, cancer screenings and health checks, resulting in up to 65% higher uptake of services communicated through the myGP platform.

Tobias Alpsten, CEO of iPLATO Healthcare, added: “We are excited to offer leading remote patient monitoring capability from Huma to our primary care partners.

“We recently launched patient questionnaires on the myGP platform to enable patient data to be coded directly into the patients’ medical records.

“We see a time when data collection highlights people at high risk, so those individuals can be offered personalised screening, treatment, advice, support and continual follow-up remotely – even alerting clinicians when patients need to be seen in-person.

“Bringing our patient questionnaires together with Huma’s remote patient monitoring capability means that this future is not too far away.”

The Patient Questionnaires were first rolled out by myGP in October last year to over 2,400 GP practices to help them capture patient information more efficiently. They delivered pre-set questions via a weblink enabled SMS or through the myGP app.