Fora Health
Fora Health automates support for shared decision making at scale - getting patients on waiting lists onto the right treatment, for them.
Fora Health automates the preparation of patients and clinicians for shared decision making outside of appointments at scale - by showing options, tracking health, and recording what matters to patients.
Reduces service utilisation, increases appointment efficiency, improves patient health literacy and activation, introduces the measurement of personalised care and shared decision making for pathways.
Details
Fora Health digitally enables shared decision making to empower patients and clinicians.
An easy-to-use chat interface on the Fora Health patient app, and Web / EHR-integrated access to patient data supports shared decision making via the following stages:
1) Prepare patients for decisions before each appointment by enabling patients to review their treatment options, indicate their preferences & what matters to them, and record relevant health information.
2) Patients discuss their treatment preferences and data recorded about their relevant health information during the next appointment with their care team, to complete a more efficient shared decision together.
3) Patients adjust to the treatment and record their clinical progress in-between appointments (via treatment adherence tracking, patient-reported outcomes, and symptom tracking).
4) Patients and care teams reflect on and evaluate the treatment throughout the pathway - opting to stay on that treatment or to change the treatment as needed.
Health systems can use Fora Health to deploy and measure the implementation of shared decision making - to plan future services and deploy personalised care at scale.
Fora Health incorporates EBSCO Option Grid™ decision aids into the patient app - and can also integrate patient decision tools from the NHS or NICE.
Share this Innovation:
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Share via emailThe problem
Chapter one of the NHS Long Term Plan makes personalised care ‘business as usual’ - driven by giving everyone access to shared decision making before, during and after appointments, showing them tools to see their options at every decision point.
However, short appointments, long waiting lists, a lack of attestable personalised care measures and limited staff resource means implementing these targets using current non-digital methods is challenging.
This is because:
1) Patients have limited opportunity to voice opinions and ask questions, leaving them misinformed throughout long waiting lists and after short appointments.
2) Overstretched clinicians feel burnt out, and are likely to place patients on default, standard treatment pathways which patients may not want, or may not use.
3) Health systems have no way of measuring their shared decision-making targets, and are spending money on treatments and appointments that may not be wanted by patients.
Fora Health has a mission to address these issues and deliver to NHS personalised care targets by making shared decision making a reality for large volumes of NHS patients and clinicians.
Evidence
Shared decision-making interventions reduce the uptake of high-risk, high-cost interventions (like major surgery) and can improve outcomes for disadvantaged people.
A US pilot of Fora Health’s depression programme showed a significant increase in patient activation at 1 year. Fora Health was also shown to reduce health service utilisation after use at 1 year - on average, reducing the number of outpatient clinic visits by 37%, including a 28% reduction in primary care visits. A 200-person study is due to be published this year, evidencing the impacts of our EHR integration.
As a UK company, we are ready to pilot and deploy within the UK. We work closely with Professor Glyn Elwyn, our scientific advisor, who is a world-leading researcher in shared decision making and a UK-trained clinician.
Together, we can configure programmes with NHS partners for any care pathway - so get in touch and work with us.
