Sheffield Children’s Hospital in association with National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Children and Young People MedTech Cooperative have been awarded Evidence Generation funding from the Innovation & Technology Payment, an NHS England programme that supports the NHS to adopt innovations by removing some of the financial and procurement barriers to introducing new technologies,  to integrate the Digital Health Passport with the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record, a Local Health Care Record Exemplar. This project focuses on allergy/anaphylaxis care plans and working with community clinics to reduce out patient appointments and urgent care demand.

The Digital Health Passport team was approached by the Greater Manchester Strategic Clinical Network. This followed an extensive piece of research into the needs of children and young people  in their area which identified an asthma care plan app as an important part of a strategy to reduce Emergency Department visits. The Greater Manchester project has received Evidence Generation funding from the Innovation & Technology Payment, an NHS England programme that supports the NHS to adopt innovations by removing some of the financial and procurement barriers to introducing new technologies, and is well supported by the regional leadership team and the local Academic and Health Science Network. The integration plan with the GM Local Health & Care Record (LHCR) is amongst the most advanced in the country and involves evaluating the use of PODs (Personally Owned Datastores). The focus for the project is to share asthma care plans between secondary and primary care, and once interoperability is established to do the same for epilepsy and diabetes.

Tiny Medical Apps (the company behind the Digital Health Passport) was commissioned by Healthy London Partnership to deliver a platform and app that would allow: deployment of digital care plans; remote condition monitoring; access to educational resources for young people with long term conditions; and have access to pollution, pollen and weather data. The initial focus was on asthma, and involved working with leading clinicians and young people across the capital to develop our ‘Minimum Lovable Product’. The DHP was initially launched in October 2019 at two sites in East London: Chrisp Street Surgery and the Royal London Hospitals with Barts Hospital following on in January 2020. An evaluation has been undertaken demonstrating evidence to Tier 2 on the NICE Evidence Standards Framework for Digital Health Tools and presented to clinicians and commissioners from across London. The ‘live co-design’ continues supporting Respiratory Nurses at the Royal London to provide a Digital Asthma Action Plan to patients preparing for discharge.