Real World Health, data, analytics and insights transforming the NHS

The catalyst for launching the business was a recognition that better use of data could alleviate some of the huge challenges and pressures that the NHS faces. The NHS is incredibly good at collecting data – it is the largest repository of data in Europe – but resource demands stop this being used to best effect. Armed with this knowledge, data science and analysis skills, and a passion to directly improve both patient care and the working life of the wonderful NHS staff – Real World Health was born.

Real World Health is a data solutions provider. Our customers are NHS acute and mental health trusts and we help them tackle some of the country’s biggest health challenges. This includes optimising theatre productivity to reduce the crippling 7.5 million waiting list for elective procedures; improving pathways to reduce length of hospital stay and exploring the health inequality landscape to ensure equal access to care for all facets of society. What makes us different is we don’t hand solutions over and walk away. We have a team of clinical experts and transformation consultants who work with the trusts to ensure theoretical improvements are realised in day-to-day benefits. 

The business launched in 2014 and the following ten years have been an incredibly exciting time in the field of data science and analytics with ML, AI and now generative AI models much more common. When we started out, we were producing dashboards and scorecards that provided an overview of the trust’s current performance. Now our solutions don’t just provide an overview, they scenario plan, helping clinicians and managers to make data driven decisions knowing not just what could happen, but what should happen!

We are a low ego but highly focussed team united by our common goal – to improve patient outcomes. That motivates everything we do and understandably weaves its way through our culture. Like many companies we have a large remote workforce so our employee engagement team is our cornerstone. They run a lot of activities and events that regularly bring us together online and in person, including our annual Real World Health Day (not to be missed!).

When we started out we were self-funded and supported by angel investors. Over the years we have been fortunate to receive investment from some supportive and progressive venture capital funds including our main backer, Maven Capital Partners. And, as we are focused on addressing healthcare inequalities and diversity and inclusion, we’ve also been able to secure grants to develop healthtech targeting communities where it will have the greatest impact.

It’s hard to pinpoint one, as the journey of an SME is a constant series of challenges, failures, learnings and successes. But a significant achievement in developing our solution has been overcoming the complexities of NHS data; the format, the systems and the architecture is enormously varied. Taking all these variables into account, to build a solution that is capable of ingesting, cleaning, wrangling and maintaining the richness of this data, which can be deployed quickly, and provide the sufficient granular results on a patient level basis, that’s definitely been a big one.

I’ve mentioned that the NHS isn’t making the best use of data and highlighted some of the critical challenges it faces. Now more than ever it needs to ensure that resources are targeted in the most impactful and effective manner – working smarter, not harder. This is where Real World Health comes in, we can drill into that data and present it back in meaningful and actionable formats, simultaneously improving patient outcomes and driving improvement in other crucial areas like staff wellbeing by supporting on things like eradicating late finishes to theatre lists.

Expanding our capabilities in life sciences. Our skills and knowledge could be hugely impactful here, particularly in patient discovery for rare diseases and we’re currently investigating this in partnership with an NHS Trust and a pharmaceutical company. The project uses our data tools to comb through medical records, identifying basic clinical information and symptoms that may indicate a person has a particular undiagnosed rare disease. Patients can then be referred to a specialist clinal centre and tested for this condition, cutting their wait for diagnosis by more than half. It’s very exciting and in the future, rolling this out across other debilitating rare diseases could improve the lives of countless more patients by expediating diagnosis and treatment.

Separate yourself from the business! A common trap founders fall into is to build the business as an extension of themselves and in their own image. This might help when pitching to investors but it can hinder development of staff and lead to emotive decision making. A frequent break and the ability to switch off allows you to come back to the business with a renewed energy and fresh outlook.

Being a CEO I can often miss the sense of satisfaction in completing projects as I tend to be involved in lots of large and slow-moving initiatives. So I carve out at least one activity each day that I can complete and savour the satisfaction in crossing it off my to-do list! Aside from that I make time for activity, exercise and family. I try to get a run in but I also get a lot of enjoyment from coaching and managing the football and cricket teams my two sons play in. This gives me the separation from the business I talked about and allows me to spend quality time with my kids doing things we all love.