NHS Wales has selected Promptly Health as its technological partner for a nationwide initiative managing the collection and harmonisation of patient-centred outcomes data.
Promptly Health will deploy a system designed to help improve patient outcomes in Wales, and will ensure that healthcare delivery is both data-driven and patient-focused.
Five companies were initially shortlisted in November 2023, for the £11m National Framework, with Promptly Health ultimately selected in January 2024. The contract will run for three years, with the potential for a two-year extension.
Pedro Ramos, CEO at Promptly Health, said: “This contract emphasises our strong commitment to fulfil our mission of making health outcomes available and aligns with our broader work with partners in the UK for delivering real-world evidence that can be used for shared decision-making by patients and healthcare professionals, and for patient-focused research and development.
“We now expect to witness other large-sized partnerships for health system data collection and sharing technology, with the acceleration of the Secure Data Environments in the UK and the European Health Data Space in Europe, for which we are serving as an industry advisor.”
NHS Wales has been recognised globally for its innovative approach to healthcare service delivery. Since 2019 it has been developing pilots for collecting patient-centred outcomes and has demonstrated its feasibility in scientific publications, conferences and education courses. It was recognised as a Global Innovation Hub by both the World Economic Forum and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Health.
The new contract awarded to Promptly Health requires a wider health system expansion of the outcomes collection capabilities, and stronger interoperability with digital health products, such as the patient-facing NHS Portal. In addition, it asks for standard harmonisation to the NHS Wales Data Dictionary, as a prerequisite for faster and higher-quality analytics and research.
The new initiative aligns with the growing emphasis on real-world evidence, data interoperability and secure data environments in healthcare. It will also set a precedent for similar advancements both in the UK and across Europe.