Delivering the digital stream of the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme in North East London

Liva Healthcare (Liva) is one of five providers of the digital stream of the Healthier You: NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme (NHS DPP). Its platform supports patients in monitoring and managing their lifestyle with the help of a free, dedicated personal health coach. As a provider in the pilot Liva is currently supporting pre-diabetic and obese/overweight patients, through its digital platform, in both North East London and the Humber, Coast and Vale.

In North East London, to get the programme off the ground and patients on boarded, Liva has been working closely with Trudy Reeve, Primary Care Improvement Lead at Barking and Dagenham Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG). The success of this project has only been possible with the continued collaborative working between Liva, the Barking, Havering and Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Groups Primary Care teams and the local GP Practices.

Trudy provides her comments on how the Digital Stream pilot has been progressed so far:

Why did you want to get involved in the digital pilot?

“As a CCG, we recognised the potential that digital technology could have in helping local people make sound, healthy life choices and in supporting them towards their personal health goals. Whilst also reducing future health resource demand by nurturing a healthier local population.

“Amongst our local GP practice registered population, there is a higher incidence of diabetes than the national average. In addition, there are over 25,000 people on the local practice pre-diabetes registers. We saw the DDP digital stream pilot as an opportunity to offer much needed help to this specific local population in reducing their personal risk of developing diabetes, whilst contributing to a larger NHS national research project.”

How did you go about getting the Programme up and running in your area?

“I believe our rapid progress from launch at the end of November 2017, to Liva receiving the first live referrals within less than six weeks, can be attributed to time well spent in developing a clear and detailed service specification.

“Using established links with the local primary care networks, Liva was invited to promote the objectives and requirements for its digital platform at various network meetings. Critically, this allowed practices to ‘visually’ appreciate the support their patients could expect if recruited onto the pilot with Liva. They were therefore able to promote the great offer available from Liva – an hour long face-to-face appointment with a trained health coach, followed by 12 months of accessible multi-component digital support and interaction with the same health coach – to their patients.

“As a result by launch, all parties had a clear vision of the local need and what could be expected by engagement in the pilot for both practices and potential patients.”

What has the result been so far?

“Within two hours of the launch, the first signed agreement from a local practice was received by the CCG. Within less than four weeks, more than the required 27 practices across our three CCGs had been identified. This then opened the door for Liva to begin on boarding the selected practices, to enable GPs in turn to begin to refer patients directly to Liva.”

What’s next?

“We have an ambitious target to recruit 1,100 patients by the end of April 2018. As more practices become fully operational, we are optimistic about achieving this target and helping over a thousand local residents engage in healthier lifestyle behaviours.”