The Journal of mHealth Vol 2 Issue 4 (August) | Page 17

Industry News

Pioneering Health App Launches
Tool to Help Achieve Digital
Healthcare Vision for Self-care
mHealth developer Health Fabric is helping deliver the vision
of patient-centred digital health by launching the Health Fabric Store where UK clinicians and commissioners can create,
share and recommend care plans with their patients and reap the
potential benefits of digitally-driven self-care.
Launched at this year’s Commissioning event in June 2015,
the Store will help patients, carers and healthcare providers to
improve care and reduce the need to use health and care services – part of the NHS’ vision for personalised health and care,
and which could go some way towards achieving Tim Kelsey’s
(NHS England’s National Director for Patients and Information) ambitious vision of using IT to help save the NHS 13.7bn
GBP per year.
“Long term health conditions now eat up almost three quarters
of the health service budget,” said Satnam Bains, chief executive officer of Health Fabric.
“At the same time, many people want to be more involved with
their own care. This technology bridges the gap between patient

and provider by using clinically relevant care plans and translating
them into patient-centric healthcare information and activities.”
The need for better self-care was a central theme to the NHS’
Five Year Forward View; the cost of chronic conditions is
expected to cost £5bn GBP per year by 2018. By providing
patients with clinically verified care plans created by healthcare
providers, the Health Fabric Store helps to address this by giving patients the knowledge, skills and capabilities they need to
manage their own care and symptoms – a key ambition for NHS
digital health.
All of the plans available have goals, actions and supportive
information to help the patients manage long term conditions
such as diabetes and COPD. These plans are then translated
into a care diary, a set of reminders and other essential data and
activities that the patient and clinician can use together to help
better manage their care. MyHealthFabric can also integrate
with the person’s health record, with the organisation already an
accredited partner of major GP system supplier EMIS.
“As a company we work with people living with type 2 diabetes,
who want to be able to take control of their lives and self-manage,” said Kate Walker, founder of Diabetes and You, which has
provided plans for the Store. “Health Fabric allows them to do
this by providing them with access to their own records as well
as educational materials, so they can learn and implement what
helps their personal health and wellbeing.”
Her views were echoed by Rosie Walker, education director of
Successful Diabetes, which has also provided information. “The
idea of Health Fabric's care plans is excellent - to give people the
opportunity of finding something that suits them exactly and
an opportunity, where it's available, to link all their health and
wellbeing information in one place.”
Accessible by patients through the MyHealthFabric app, which
can be downloaded via Google Play and iTunes and is available on NHS apps, the Store is open to organisations that have
developed care plans that work for patients and professionals
alike, such as health and care charities, clinical commissioning
groups, and bodies looking to harness technology to develop
new models of care.
This is the latest in a series of Health Fabric developments that
have seen them covered in the recent Connected Health report
from the Deloitte Centre of Health Solutions. Health Fabric
was chosen as one of ten Department of Health-supported
apps in 2013, and is working with clinicians and commissioners
across the country on realising the vision of a patient-centred
digital health ecosystem that will enable the behaviour change
essential for the future of NHS care provision. n

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