Digital Health Coffee Time Briefing ☕

Your morning summary of digital health news, information and events to know about if you want to be “in the know”.

👇 News

🤝Healthcare services providers Affidea and Reset Health have teamed up to launch a new digital health platform for the management of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Roczen will be available across Affidea clinics in Europe and helps patients manage weight and type 2 diabetes through personalised plans, health check-ins and ongoing support from doctors. The platform tracks users’ health data to offer tailored treatments and, where eligible, access to medications like GLP-1.

🦽 Software provider Synbiotix and mapping company Living Map have launched a tool designed to help hospitals improve operations by keeping track of equipment. The platform combines Synbiotix’s facilities management software with Living Map’s real-time asset tracking and visualisation tools, allowing hospitals to locate and allocate essential items like wheelchairs and stretchers based on their proximity. It is hoped that the tool will help address the time and financial costs of misplaced equipment.

📽️ University of Gloucestershire and NHS Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board have commissioned a training film that provides insights into approaches to making potentially life-saving decisions. ‘Risking Happiness 2’ features contributions from NHS staff and social care providers working on the frontline across a range of disciplines, who share their experiences working within high-pressure environments. Created and produced by local filmmaker Emma Cleasby, the film is designed to encourage conversations and promote supportive cultures within care settings.

🔬 Mid Cheshire Hospitals has launched a new clinical research unit to help staff support more studies that improve care for patients. The Trust received £40,000 of funding from the Clinical Research Network – North West Coast to create the facility at Leighton Hospital. The Clinical Research Unit will create extra capacity so the team can offer a wider range of trials, particularly in the area of life sciences.

🏆 Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has been recognised for its work in ensuring safe staffing levels at each of its eight inpatient sites. The trust was one of six winners at the RLDatix Awards 2024, picking up the Safer Care award. Northumbria Healthcare’s project involved tracking real-time data on staff movements via a dashboard to ensure that each site was adequately staffed and had the right skill mix, reducing unnecessary staff moves and supporting wellbeing. 

❓Did you know?

More than 5,000 people in England have been diagnosed with lung cancer earlier thanks to an innovative NHS initiative, which uses mobile scanning trucks to visit local communities.

The NHS Targeted Lung Health Check programme is the biggest initiative in NHS history aimed at improving early lung cancer diagnosis, and is specifically targeted at areas of the country with the highest rates of lung cancer.

The latest NHS data shows that 5,037 lung cancers have now been found through the programme since its launch in 2019.

Data also shows that more than three-quarters (76%) of the lung cancers identified by the programme were found at the earliest stages of one and two, when it is potentially curable. People diagnosed with lung cancer at the earliest stages are nearly 20 times more likely to survive for five years than those whose cancer is caught late.

Dame Cally Palmer, NHS cancer director, said: “These lung checks can save lives, so it’s fantastic that the NHS has been able to diagnose thousands of people at an early stage when lung cancer is potentially curable.”

📖 What we’re reading

The King’s Fund article, What does the Autumn Budget 2024 mean for health and care?, published on 31 October, explores the Autumn Budget’s implications for health and social care funding.

Author Siva Anandaciva raises concerns that despite additional resources, the budget may fall short of addressing rising pressures from increased wages and operational demands.

He also highlights a lack of clarity around public health budgets, suggesting that further structural action is needed to manage growing workforce and facilities challenges across the NHS.

Adult social care remains especially vulnerable to these cost pressures, Anandaciva notes, with limited new support and no clear direction on long-promised reforms.

“The adult social care sector employs as many people as the NHS but sits outside the formal public sector, and will be far more exposed to the increased cost pressures of the higher National Living Wage and higher National Insurance Employer Contribution costs the Chancellor also announced in the budget,” he says.

“Adult social care may not have been left entirely out in the cold by this budget, but the atmosphere definitely feels chilly – especially as the much-promised fundamental reforms for social care remain over the horizon rather than in plain sight from the current policy agenda of this government.”

🚨Upcoming events

28 November, virtual event – NHS IT Infrastructure 2024