NHSX announces projects are to receive share of £6.5m as part of Adoption Fund

NHSX has confirmed that a number of projects are set to receive a share of £6.5million from its Adoption Fund.

In total 35 projects have been selected to benefit from the fund and range from initiatives to support digital inclusion; gastroenterology pathways; musculoskeletal pathways; perioperative pathways; as well as cardiology and cardiac surgery networks.

The aim of the fund is to help transform care for patients using digital technology following the rapid development of digital healthcare in light of the Covid pandemic.

The fund was set up to support innovation within the NHS that:

• Has some evidence base in the NHS and can support current priorities around elective recovery
• Is DTAC [Digital Technology Assessment Criteria] compliant or if not then on its way to being so
• Is not being funded elsewhere by the NHS
• Has the potential for rapid, wide roll-out across the NHS

There were 138 applications made to the fund, of which just 35 were selected to receive funding. They’ll now receive funds to help them with the delivery of new digital clinical pathways for patients. As well as funding specific pathways, the Adoption Fund also hopes to address digital inequalities.

Lisa Hollins, director of innovation at NHSX, said a blog: “The final area for funding and the one that we hope offers the greatest learning is the Digital Inequalities Pioneers project, jointly delivered by NHSX’s Innovation Team and NHS England’s Health Inequalities team.”

“10 integrated care schemes will work with Thrive by Design (formerly mHabitat) to better understand how we can deliver inclusive digital pathways by design and offer learning for all pathways.”

The 10 winners in the Digital Health Inequality Pioneers category include Digital exclusion mapping; 100 Day Health Equity Challenge: BP at home; EDAMS: Empowering Digital Access in Maternity Services and Digital exclusive feasibility study: South West London MSK app.

Matthew Gould, chief executive of NHSX, added: “These initiatives show how digital can help the NHS ease the pressure on services, from digitising standard pre-treatment assessment processes; to freeing up clinical time by supporting patients to manage their conditions at home.”

The announcement of the NHSX Adoption Fund comes just weeks after NHSX named the 14 projects receiving funding as part of the Digital Health Partnership Awards. These awards are designed to help accelerate the adoption of digital health technologies through funding and support.