Health Companion
Creating a new AI based self-management platform, that addresses health inequalities by meeting the unmet need of BAME communities to self-manage their long-term conditions and improve health and wellbeing through preventative health.
About the project
The NHS Race and Health observatory recently highlighted ethnic inequalities in the UK. Examples included that 24% of all deaths in England and Wales in 2019 that were caused by cardio vascular disease were in black and ethnic groups. Also South Asians have a 40% higher death rate from CHD than the general population, and south Asian and black people are 2-4 times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than white people.
With support from Innovate UK, Health Fabric has created a new platform called ‘Unity’ to fulfil these recommendations. Innovate Project ‘89932: AI enabled self-management to address health inequalities’ has enabled Healthy Fabric to create a new AI-based new self-management platform, that meets the unmet need of BAME communities to self-manage their long-term conditions. The platform allows all service users, including people of BAME origin to manage their long-term conditions in multiple languages with the Unity App, which was tested in a single GP Practice.
The next step is to scale this initial work across a local authority to enable self-care and new models of care for independent living for 1000’s of citizens, across multicultural communities to manage existing conditions and improve health and wellbeing through preventative health, and enhance the clinical service provided by the GP implementation.