Public Funding for Healthera Ltd

Getting an appointment with GPs is increasingly difficult; demographic challenges, shortage of GPs, Covid-19 related backlogs and work or personal commitments make it challenging to see a GP when needed. Meanwhile high street pharmacies are in decline due to the rise of supermarket and online retailers despite being ideally placed to help many patients with their minor ailments. This application is focused at finding a way of taking pressure off the local GP and linking up customers/patients with their local pharmacist. The applicant, Healthera, is the developer of an integrated digital system that enables local sales, coordination, delivery and tracking of medicines in addition to booking minor treatments and consultations (typically vaccinations or minor health consultations). This solution has proven to be very popular during the pandemic as it enabled local pharmacies to deliver medicines safely and continue to function as much as possible during a difficult time. Despite this app being used by 1400 pharmacies at present, the Healthera app has failed to gain the volume of users and purchases needed to achieve the economies of scale needed to drive growth. The main challenges are: * Currently the app only makes money on a fixed fee per pharmacy and small margin items such as the sale of prescription medicines. The app needs to make more money by providing more valuable products such as the sale of consultations to purchase premium products (e.g. lifestyle treatment products or wellness products). * A lot of patients/users have a tendency to "forget" or use the app just once. Healthera needs to develop ways to retain users and wishes to develop and experiment with a subscription-based service model. * Healthera's current prescription delivery service is based on the pharmacy's own delivery capabilities, which are often very costly to the pharmacy and at an inconsistent standard to the user, compounded by limited coverage. Healthera wishes to develop a streamlined and dedicated "in-house" delivery service to enhance value-add and improve customer experience for both pharmacies and users. The enclosed Innovation Loan application aims to develop a suite of digital solutions that addresses the above three issues, into an integrated and automated next generation Healthera platform. A series of pilots through the project timeline will be carried out to ensure the effectiveness of Healthera across the pharmacy landscape.

Each year 1.3 billion UK prescription items are dispensed, of which only 26 million are acquired online. This means that 1,274,000,000 orders are still obtained in person, involving visits to the GP and multiple visits to the pharmacy, all these entities work on their own with little communication. At Healthera we believe getting and taking your medication should be simple and hassle free. That is why we have built an App to modernise the experience, providing software to connect the fragmented system and deliver a reliable online prescription solution. Our existing, NHS-Accredited, App allows patients to order medicine and connect with a pharmacy local to them at the touch of a button. When the medicine is ready they can choose to pick up from the pharmacy or, where the pharmacy offers delivery, choose the delivery option. This reduces pharmacy visits and has shown itself to be particularly welcome during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has highlighted how many in our society are vulnerable and reliant on uninterrupted access to their pharmacists and medication. By contacting some of the 1,000 pharmacies that already use our existing NHS-Accredited App we have identified a gap in the market, we aim to fill this gap with a same-day on-demand tracked delivery service for prescription drugs available to all pharmacies that use our App. Some pharmacies already offer a delivery service, but not all pharmacies have the staff or money required for this. For those that do the way deliveries are processed and undertaken is anything but clear and consistent. The patient often has to call a pharmacy to check if delivery is actually available to them as there often aren't clear guidelines on: 1. Who is eligible for free delivery as each pharmacy sets their own rules, often discriminating by the patient's condition or the number of items ordered. 2. How much they charge for delivery. 3. When the delivery would arrive. 4. Any means of communicating with the delivery team. We know that patients are increasingly looking for a fast, reliable and convenient way to obtain their prescriptions, especially in recent times given the travel disruption caused by the pandemic. Through completion of this research project, we aim to: o Offer every patient a fast and reliable local delivery option by offering all the pharmacies on our platform the opportunity to deliver prescriptions through a third-party delivery fleet local to them. * Our initial pilot test will focus on offering local delivery in London, where lots of people live and traffic restrictions mean pharmacies offering delivery are few and far between. o Reduce the overall prescription ordering time from 14 days to a same day service and improve the medication experience for 30 million patients in the UK. A delivery option extends and improves the capabilities of the partner pharmacies with which we already do business, in essence we will be to the local pharmacy market what Deliveroo is to the takeaway food business.

Two innovative healthcare software companies have created a novel digital health concept to increase the level of medical compliance for patients, efficiency of pharmacy clinical services and support pharmacies in becoming first-line clinical providers. The lead applicant has a personal health management solution (Healthera), while the second applicant (not grant recipients due to their company size) provides patient medical records solutions that are used by half of all pharmacies in the UK pharmacy sector (Cegedim Rx). The teams primary challenge is on the realisation of solutions that support the timely intake of medicine, ordering of prescriptions, and access to pharmacies for clinical advice and support. The challenge, and the subject of this proposal, is to develop an advanced hybrid solution that is able to improve adherence of medication and improve the overall operational efficiency of pharmacy’s clinical service delivery process. The enclosed project will conduct a pilot study of the novel digital health solution with an aim of generating quantified economic/healthcare savings for dissemination to respective clinical commissioning groups. The proposed pilot study will include test and control arms to ensure the pilot software trial provides the most robust examination of the novel dispensing and medication management solution. Evaluation of the pilot study will be conducted by impartial experts in healthcare operational/organisational efficiency.