eConsult Health has announced it has been selected to participate in the global AWS Healthcare Accelerator: Global Cohort for Workforce, to advance solutions for addressing urgent healthcare workforce challenges.

The AWS Healthcare Accelerator is a four-week technical, business and mentorship programme for start-ups seeking to use AWS to improve healthcare workforce training, retention and deployment.

The opportunity will support eConsult Health’s digital triage solutions, which aim to reduce the patient backlog and relieve overworked NHS staff across primary and secondary care.

The Accelerator curriculum provides opportunities, including hands-on AWS Cloud and technical training, mentorship from healthcare experts, as well as exposure to AWS customers and members of the AWS Partner Network.

eConsult may also receive AWS computing credits and opportunities to speak to investors and industry experts, including at Demo Day, where eConsult’s eTriage platform will be showcased.

Dr Murray Ellender, practicing GP and CEO at eConsult, said: “We are thrilled to have been selected to participate in the AWS Healthcare Accelerator. It is critical that innovative companies come together to address the urgent challenges facing our healthcare system, and digitalisation is the way forward.

“With support from the AWS Healthcare Accelerator, we hope to enable better working lives for clinicians by streamlining their work processes and reduce burnout. It is our goal that this will have a significant impact on NHS staff retention and reinstate the joy of patient care for health professionals.”

eConsult has partnered with various organisations over the last few years, including Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust to deliver a patient management system, and InterSystems to support the expansion of its eConsult and eTriage solutions.

The digital triage system provider will use AWS services to advance its solutions with the goal of reducing individual workloads by removing friction from processes and systems, for example streamlining clinical workflows for GPs, emergency departments and outpatient practices.

The goal for eConsult is to make clinicians’ working lives easier, in turn reducing burnout to support retention within the NHS.

Cloud technologies can also support new ways of working, and eTriage allows clinicians to work from different settings while directing patients to the correct route of care faster and treating those who are most in need first.

Dr Rowland Illing, chief medical officer and director of international public sector health at AWS, said: “Solutions to help clinicians as well as other office and technical staff in healthcare are needed urgently and globally.

“We know that advancing cloud- and technology-enabled approaches can alleviate some of the burden, and we’re proud to be convening standout start-ups and healthcare leaders in this first-ever global Accelerator to do that.”