To transform how we take medicines, CONNECTCare has received a £1 million grant from Innovate UK (which also founded Aegiq, WeWALK and many others).
The funding was awarded in two phases, with £615K invested in late 2022, followed by an additional injection of almost half a million pounds in recent weeks.
The funding will help CONNECTCare bring new software to market that can ‘digitise the brain of a pharmacist’. Millions of older people could benefit from this technology by preventing dangerous falls and avoiding hospitalisation.
Issa Dasu-Patel, CEO of CONNECTCare, commented, “Using just an NHS number, we can create personalised, contextualised insights that will help people stay well. We’re so grateful to receive this additional Innovate UK backing so we can scale this application of our software and move a step closer towards creating a single source of truth for medicines data in the UK.”
Powers pharmacy of the future
With an increasing number of patients not seeing their pharmacist in person, there is a higher risk of dangerous side effects and interactions from the medicines they are taking. CONNECTCare was founded by Issa and his brother, Mehfuz, in 2021 to give patients access to vital medicines information and knowledge remotely, to help them manage their conditions independently and safely at home.
With his family having worked in the pharmacy space for years, Issa witnessed the crucial necessity of the role played by community pharmacists. He realised the need for better remote support for patients who were managing their own conditions at home while working on the UK’s first national remote monitoring programme during COVID.
The organisation’s mission is to ensure everyone understands and uses medicines safely, leading to better care and better health outcomes.
CONNECTCare can be used by a wide range of people with complex medication needs. In particular, the insights on potential side effects and interactions can help keep elderly patients safe by flagging when there is an increased risk of complications, such as falls. Information on how a patient is taking their medication, and the potential side effects, can also be shared with their carers and clinicians, to ensure continuity of care and prevent dangerous complications.
As a result of the funding, CONNECTCare will be able to develop and bring to market the technology necessary to digitise medicines.
How does it work?
The technology takes data currently siloed in medical records and transforms it into contextualised, personalised information that helps patients and health professionals make crucial links between medicines and their impact on an individual’s wider health. In a nation first attempt, this tech uses a patient’s NHS number to make this crucial information available.
Currently, making medicine data accessible and understandable is missing in healthcare. Records are either hard to access or manual, making it extremely difficult to get information to the right people, at the right time. Eventually, people are not aware of the potential side effects of a new medicine or the possible effects of medicines they are already taking.
Through CONNECTCare’s technology, existing prescription data held by GPs, pharmacists, and other healthcare teams can be unlocked. Via the software platform, it provides crucial insights to patients and care teams, such as whether a new prescription may increase a patient’s likelihood of falling. For instance, if a combination of medicines may cause dehydration, the patient will have to drink more fluids.
Currently, their team consist of 12 members – 5 women and 7 men. Further, a hiring program is already in place to support their product’s growth.
