Each week we spotlight one of our DigitalHealth.London businesses, founders or NHS fellows. Today we are excited to introduce our current DigitalHealth.London Accelerator company, Aide Health.
What challenge are you facing and why is it important?
There are 26 million people in the UK and around 200 million in the US living with one or more long-term conditions. Help focuses on the challenge of co-morbidity: people with two or more long-term conditions. This happens more than half the time and we believe this situation is seriously underserved. Aide is designed to be a holistic platform that supports any combination of conditions over the long term.
What is the solution you have developed and how can it help solve the problem?
Help is a digital service that helps patients and their clinicians better understand and manage chronic diseases. We focus on the missing element in healthcare delivery: comorbidity. Using conversational AI, Aide has short daily conversations with patients to help them take care of themselves. The information is sent to a cloud-based clinician platform to support decision-making with real patient data and insights, with less reliance on patient recall ability.
Today, Aide supports asthma, type 2 diabetes and hypertension and is working to support the top ten long-term conditions over the next two years.
What is the history of your company?
Aide was founded in 2021 following 12 months of R&D and validation with UK and US healthcare systems including the NHS, pharmaceutical industry, insurers, charities and patient groups. A pilot project was launched in May 2022 to support asthma and type 2 diabetes, with results that led to the commercialization of Aide in several primary care networks. In mid-2023, Aide received an NIHR grant to support the development of a pathway for hypertension, which included participation from the British Heart Foundation’s Patient Voices group. In March 2024, we published the results of our year-long partnership with Suffolk Primary Care.
What successes have you had so far through successful pilots/trials/contracts?
Aide has been commissioned across several primary care networks and has just completed the results report for its first client, Suffolk Primary Care.
The results demonstrated an ability to stratify risk, improve compliance and reduce clinical duration and risk of hospitalization:
- 71.8% retention after 30 days (22x industry average)
- Achieved 73.3% on average. medication compliance.
- Avg. 4 conversations completed per patient/oldest user day aged 76, median age 50
- +8.4% on average. change in patient confidence
- 40.6% conversion from invitation to download.
- Mobilized people in area categories such as “hard-pressed aging workers,” “diversity struggling,” “rural renters,” “out-of-town hardship,” and “urban professionals and families.”
Resulting in a saving of time and a reduction in the risk of hospitalization:
Potential 332.3 hours and £19.2k saved per thousand asthma patients using asynchronous education.
Reduce the risk of potential hospitalization by uncovering hidden medical behaviors:
Aide identified that 50% of patients did not have an asthma action plan (AAP), which patients were overusing their rescue inhaler (>2 times per week) and for what reason, and provided training on the use of rescue and prevention inhalers.
What are your future goals? What does success look like?
Support 100 million lives around the world and become one of the most influential companies reversing the unsustainable trajectory of chronic disease.
Over the next 12 months, Aide will add at least two conditions, including COPD and cardiovascular disease, continue to support NHS patients and clinicians and begin working with pharmaceutical companies.
How has your time at the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator helped you achieve these goals?
DigitalHealth.London has helped us better understand and navigate the NHS, refining our proposition and outcomes, and identifying the right people within the NHS who could benefit from our technology.
Do you have any advice for future digital health companies?
Involve patients as early as possible in the development of your technology. Get your product into people’s hands as quickly as possible.
Any requests for the public?
If you are in the NHS and would like to improve the patient’s ability to care for themselves, reducing use and the risk of hospitalization, we would be happy to hear from you.
Aide Health is currently part of Cohort 7 of the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator programme.
THE DigitalHealth.London Accelerator The program is funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF). It is delivered by the Health Innovation Network (HIN) South London in partnership with the Office of Life Sciences, CW+, Medicity, NHS England, the Mayor of London and the Leveling Up Fund.
For more information, please visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-
Shared Prosperity Fund prospectus.
