Inform Well being to launch new instruments to enhance HIV care    

Sexual well being software program supplier, Inform Well being is saying a sequence of enhancements to its HIV providing forward of the British HIV Affiliation (BHIVA) Spring Convention in Gateshead subsequent week.   

Designed to avoid wasting clinic sources and enhance affected person expertise, Inform’s patient-facing Private Well being File (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 sooner, extra full and extra dependable CD4 and viral load HARS knowledge reporting. 

Inform Health’s on-line affected person self-management instruments are already being utilized in sexual well being providers to facilitate self-managed appointment reserving, triage and on-line testing. The instruments additionally embrace an eligibility evaluation for chlamydia remedy self-administration.  

The brand new enhancements will allow providers to ask sufferers to finish a self-taken historical past – corresponding to present medicine, allergy, and menstrual cycle data – previous to their clinic attendance. They are going to be recorded in real-time, straight into the clinic’s Digital Affected person File (EPR) system. Clinicians can evaluate what the affected person has entered alongside the affected person’s present EPR report in a break up display, and merge related knowledge the place acceptable. 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 data and steering, whereas their responses are assessed previous to an invite by way of their PHR to e-book an appointment. This pre-attendance evaluation stage will assist providers to observe 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. It will improve autonomy and comfort, while additional decreasing stress on providers and supporting the onward transmission goal of 0 by 2030.  

Sensible implementation

Oxfordshire Sexual Well being Service is presently working with Inform Well being to harness the brand new PrEP performance. The service’s marketing consultant sexual well being medical lead, Emily Lord, believes such digital applied sciences have gotten more and more vital for sufferers and suppliers throughout all healthcare settings, significantly following the Covid-19 pandemic. She mentioned: “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 easier and extra environment friendly. It could additionally scale back boundaries to accessing repeat PrEP prescriptions, bettering affected person engagement and adherence to PrEP.   

“On the service degree, it can permit us to make sure that we use the experience of our clinicians effectively, making certain sufferers with medical issues, or these unable to make use of our digital providers, are seen by skilled clinicians in face-to-face clinics.” 

Moreover, for purchasers with an digital laboratory feed, Inform Well being is presently testing new performance to routinely populate CD4 and viral load data required for HARS reporting. Developed with a number of present 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 knowledge seamlessly from lab programs into the right affected person report; saving time and sources and creating extra dependable and full HARS datasets. 

Commenting on the brand new developments, Inform Well being business director, Sue Bunn, mentioned: “After years of elevated demand, together with the continued fallout from the Mpox outbreak, many sexual well being and HIV providers throughout the UK are struggling to take care of backlogs and hold tempo with that demand. 

“It has at all times been our mission to grasp the boundaries to offering environment friendly, secure, and low-cost service supply and to make use of our technical experience to engineer efficient, modern options to those boundaries,” she added.