Care City achieves further NHS test bed funding to improve care for people with long-term conditions

Care City in North East London has been announced as one of seven Test Beds selected for Wave 2 of NHS England’s Test Bed Programme, which aims to test combinations of innovations in real world clinical settings.

Care City is an innovative programme which brings together market-ready diagnostics, smartphone applications and management tools to support patients with long-term conditions in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. With the backing of UCLPartners, Care City hasjoined the second Test Bed and will be working with eight tech innovations to overcome health and care issues in its region. In particular it will look at the power of junior members of the workforce to overcome barriers to the wider use of these innovations, in partnership with patients.

Director of Integrated Care at UCLPartners and Executive Lead at Care City, Jenny Shand said:
“We are delighted to have supported Care City to secure a second wave test bed. The growing experience and expertise in testing, implementing, evaluating and scaling innovations is critical to the future of the system and secures their position as innovation partner to East London. The focus on workforce roles is particularly exciting, uniting our education and staff needs with the innovation agenda.”

UCLPartners provided dedicated support to Care City in its formative months leading up to its launch in 2016, helping to reshape the strategy and secure grants to mould the preliminary programme of work. Part of this support was securing Care City’s position as an NHS England Test Bed for Innovation. Coming up to its three-year anniversary, Care City continues to make a huge impact in its region, improving the lives of those with long-term conditions, dementia and those that care for them.

Care City will respond to three East London STP challenges, which also affect health and care nationally:

• Primary Care – 26% of primary care services in North East London are rated ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’ by the CQC versus 13%.
• Right care – Low reported vs expected prevalence rates for long-term conditions with high rates of hospital admission.
• Workforce – There are 1,769 patients per GP in East London compared to the London average of 1,660.

Care City’s ambitious programme will work to transform how we identify, treat and manage long-term conditions; increase skills and work force productivity; remodel areas of the workforce and service pathways across East London; and to scale these models nationally.

John Craig, Chief Executive, Care City, is delighted to lead another successful Test Bed opportunity:
“Our aim for this Test Bed is to use innovation to enhance the work and productivity of junior health and care roles. Domiciliary carers, healthcare assistants and hospital administrators represent around one million people across our health and care system. Enhancing their productivity is urgent for them and their careers, for patients and for the system as a whole. For Care City, it is a perfect focus, combining our twin aims of enabling healthy aging and helping to regenerate East London.”