Imperial College London spun off a digital health business called Digital Care Planning yesterday to commercialise a digital platform connecting end-of-life patients and clinicians.
Digital Care Planning has developed a tool called Amber Care Plans that creates digital records of advance care plans (ACPs), which help patients record their preferred courses of care and treatment in case they are unable to communicate.
ACPs have been linked with reducing unnecessary hospital stays and ensuring that palliative patients can die at their preferred place of care.
The spinout also hopes to develop an artificial intelligence-based chatbot to talk people through creating their care plans and longer term hopes to introduce a voice-activated ACP platform.
The technology will enable patients to explore end-of-life issues without needing to book a GP appointment.
Digital Care Planning launched from Helix Centre, an incubator partnership between Imperial College and Royal College of Art focused on human design-orientated approaches to healthcare.
The business has received support from Imperial Innovations, the tech transfer operation of the university now owned by commercialisation firm IP Group.
Ara Darzi, chairman of Helix Centre, said: “Having an ACP is a major step in living well with infirmity and staying out of hospital. However, when it comes to the end of life, the latest figures from NHS England show that almost half of us die in a hospital.
“Few of us want to be there and many have no clinical need to be there. To get joined up end of life care in your home, you should have a plan.”
