By Steve Marriott on November 20, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on healthcare services across the UK. Since the start of the pandemic, healthcare company, Spirit Health, has been investing in its technology and education services to provide remote and online support for vulnerable patients and NHS staff alike, and provide essential safeguarding as the country enters the winter months with the usual pressures complicated by the risk of an expected second wave.
Spirit is proud to have been supporting NHS organisations, carers and frontline staff, to significantly increase the number of vulnerable patients being monitored at home, as local hospital bed capacity was being increased for COVID-19 patients.
Spirit Digital’s remote monitoring platform CliniTouch Vie has enabled respiratory and heart failure patients, and those discharged from hospital early as a result of the pandemic, to be supported in the community. While clinic appointments were suspended to reduce face-to-face contact between patients and their clinical team, the use of digital, remote monitoring has enabled the number of home visits to be reduced by over a third, making more efficient use of community-based clinical resources and keeping patients safe with a documented significant increase in telephone and video consultations.
Spirit is now also extending this remote monitoring service for patients with certain lung conditions who need Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation, a supervised programme that includes breathing techniques, health education and exercise training.
In addition, Spirit rapidly moved its EMPOWER diabetes education programme, traditionally provided in a face-to-face setting, to a virtual service during April and has since added classes for non-native English speakers, including Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu. By the end of July, Spirit has run 47 courses online on behalf of the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Clinical Commissioning Groups (LLR CCGs), and has had nearly 70 people who speak Indo-Aryan languages referred on to the programme. The company has also recently been awarded a £1million contract to deliver a diabetes education booking service across the South East of England.
As a consequence of this innovation and growth and to continue to develop its services and geographic reach, Spirit Health has added a total of 33 jobs to its local economy in Leicestershire, with five additional positions planned.
Chris Barker, CEO, Spirit Health, concludes:
“The situation we find ourselves in with COVID-19 emphasises why Spirit exists – to make health easy and accessible. We are proud to be in a position to support our NHS and our vulnerable people and will continue to respond and adapt to this unprecedented situation, finding new ways to provide brilliant products and services to as many people as we can possibly reach.”
