Vinehealth Review of 2022
Author: Rayna Patel, CEO Vinehealth
Throughout 2022 we have listened closely to our patients, clinicians and life-science stakeholders responding to their needs with our ongoing investments in talented people and product development. We are delighted to have seen this pay off in the brilliant response from patients to our technology and our rapid growth across the UK health and life science ecosystem. Here are just a few highlights:
Building the Vinehealth ecosystem
We’ve continued to build support with patients, healthcare providers and life sciences; contracting with the world’s largest life science companies to answer novel real-world research questions partnering with leading cancer charities including CRUK and Future Dreams to support their patients, and working with several Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) and leading NHS cancer centres including Royal Marsden and UCLH across the UK to revolutionise the delivery of clinical cancer care.
The patient-first focus of the Vinehealth app, plus AI-driven personalisation and behavioural science, delights patients and ensures prolonged engagement and rich data generation. Medically-validated longitudinal symptoms and patient recorded outcome measures (PROMS) data, viewed via the clinician-facing VinehealthPRO dashboard, make it easy for clinicians to see the bigger picture, personalise care, and offer remote support to improve cancer services, patients’ experience of care, and patient outcomes.
2022 has seen Vinehealth’s ready-to-go patient support program (PSP) being deployed by life science companies to personalise care for cancer patients receiving specific drug treatments. Patients can access bespoke support and education related to the drug therapy delivered directly to them, as and when they need it. Understanding the lived experiences of cancer patients beyond the hospital clinic, captured in patient reported data such as symptoms and PROMS, is helping our life science partners tailor their treatments to patient needs, improve medication adherence, and improve clinical delivery of drugs. Vinehealth also enables researchers and life science companies to capture rich, longitudinal quality of life (QoL) data for real-world evidence (RWE) studies, filling a much-needed gap in our understanding of those living with cancer and how they are responding to treatnent.
Evidence in clinical practice
We’ve made swift progress in recruiting NHS Trust sites, oncologists and patients to our £1m Innovate UK-funded Randomised Control Trial (RCT) in partnership with Surrey Clinical Trials Unit and 9 NHS Trusts.
We exhibited research at ISPOR Europe highlighting that neither age nor sex is a barrier to the use of a cancer patient support app on a smartphone. At UKONs Annual Conference our study described improved cancer medication adherence in patients using the Vinehealth app.
We have many other projects underway. Consultant medical oncologist Michael Flynn of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) presented his use of Vinehealth in clinical practice at The Oncology Convention. Clinical fellow Felix Josza described a study at the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery Neurology to the South West Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) webinar. Results from these studies include:
100% completion of patient reported outcome measure (PROMs) questionnaires
87% of patients reporting real quality of life benefits of being able to access personalised information and report symptom data
Clinician dashboard of patients’ symptoms and medication adherence enabling more targeted conversations with patients during face to face appointments
Working closely with oncology nurses
We’ve partnered with the UK oncology nursing society (UKONS) and were delighted to exhibit Vinehealth at the UKONS annual conference. We were reminded about the passion nurses have for their patients and also uplifted to hear nurses’ ideas for Vinehealth to support various cancer nursing specialties including:
Systemic anti-cancer therapy (SACT) to remotely detect early indications of chemotherapy toxicity
Acute oncology services (AOS) for faster prioritisation of patients for follow-up
Haemato-oncology to support new ‘hospital-at-home’ models of care
Scale and speed to market
Our catalogue of regulatory approvals has grown again in 2022, including our classification as a CE-marked class 1 medical device, Cyber Essentials certification, GDPR and HIPAA compliance, and the NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit certification. These approvals not only mean we can sail through due diligence processes, but are also enabling Vinehealth’s rapid deployment at scale, including our upcoming US launch.
Thriving and growing
We celebrated our 4th birthday and since the beginning of this year we’ve tripled the size of our super-talented and mission-driven Vinehealth team. This includes further investments in product, engineering, commercial, operations and clinical affairs.
Awards & recognition
Both myself and co-founder and CTO Georgina Kirby have participated in speaker panels and presented Vinehealth at a variety of science and health technology events. We are delighted to see that Vinehealth’s leadership and innovation in digital health and personalised cancer support has been reflected in a number of awards including the most innovative cancer patient support tool in the Global Health and Pharma Awards and being listed in the Department of International Trade (DIT) 2023 Digital Health Playbook.
Georgina and I are incredibly proud of the hard work of Vinehealth’s brilliant team in getting to this point of delivering technology with true impact. As ever, we remain in awe of the patients working with us to build a platform that can help so many others going through the toughest of times and transform the way we deliver cancer treatments for the future. Thank you to all Vinehealth’s friends and supporters - wishing you all a restful break and a happy New Year!
