Released: Wednesday 16th June 2021

Scottish digital transformation consultancy Storm ID has been successful in the latest round of the ‘Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award’, for a service which uses artificial intelligence to help patients with COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

The innovative service is a digital solution enabling remote monitoring of patient conditions with new technologies, support from clinicians, and tools for self-management. It is a collaboration of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, the West of Scotland Innovation Hub, Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre, and Storm ID, developers of the Lenus Health Platform.

This service is currently offered by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian to 2,000 people who have COPD. The chronic lung disease affects approximately 1.2 million in UK and is the second most common cause of emergency hospital admissions.

The AI Award has awarded £1.2 million to the team developing the service, to accelerate testing and evaluation of artificial intelligence technologies which meet the aims set out in the NHS Long Term Plan. The work will focus on evaluation of personalised risk prediction scores within routine clinical practice to reorientate the management of COPD patients to a proactive and preventative care model.

The Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award is one of the NHS AI Lab programmes, led by NHSX. The competitive award scheme is run by the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) in partnership with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

The Award aims to increase the impact of AI-driven technologies to help solve clinical and operational challenges across the NHS and care settings. It will speed up the most promising technologies through the regulatory process by building an evidence base to demonstrate the effectiveness and safety of AI-driven technologies in health and social care.

Four ‘phases’ of award are available to support AI solutions from initial feasibility to evaluation within NHS and social care settings.

Paul McGinness, Co-founder and Director at Storm ID, said

The Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award recognises the world class data science work undertaken to date by the project team. We look forward to working with the NHS to operationalise the use of AI driven personalised risk prediction scores within clinical practice, to ultimately help patients with COPD.

Dr Chris Carlin, Clinical Lead of Dynamic Scot and Consultant Respiratory Physician, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said

We’re really pleased to have been successful in the latest round of the Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award. COPD is a global healthcare challenge and managing it has become even more challenging with the COVID-19 pandemic. The COPD digital service we’ve developed has helped reduce that pandemic impact, with a positive impact on patient care and outcomes. This award will allow us to bring the exciting innovations – AI insights – that we’ve developed in the research environment through into clinical practice. The evaluations that this award will allow us to undertake will let us gather the evidence about how best to use these AI insights to support people with COPD and their clinical teams to co-manage their condition.

Dr David Lowe, Co-Clinical Lead of Dynamic Scot and Consultant Emergency Medicine, West of Scotland Innovation Lead NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said
The award allows the Dynamic Scot team to continue to transform COPD care in Scotland and share the digital service with the rest of the UK and worldwide. Artificial Intelligence embedded clinical decision support delivered to COPD patients will, we hope to demonstrate, enhance care for this group of patients but also provide a template for future work in other clinical areas such as heart failure and the challenges of an ageing population. Robust evaluation of data driven strategies such as AI will enable the NHS to streamline adoption giving confidence to both patients and clinicians ensuring engagement and realisation of the benefits of innovation within the NHS.

Dan Bamford, Deputy Director AI Award, Accelerated Access Collaborative, said
Congratulations to Storm ID / Lenus on their success as one of our winners in Round 2 of the AI Award. We look forward to working with them as they develop and test their technology further, so that more patients can benefit from this cutting-edge artificial intelligence.

Dr Indra Joshi, Director of AI, NHSX, said
With this latest round of AI Award winners, we now have an incredible breadth of expertise across a wide range of clinical and operational areas. Through this award, Storm ID / Lenus will be at the forefront of applying artificial intelligence in new ways to transform health and care.

Gillian Docherty OBE, Chair of Scotland’s AI Alliance and CEO of The Data Lab, said
It is fantastic seeing Storm ID’s success in the Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Award, run by the Accelerated Access Collaborative in partnership with NHSX and the National Institute for Health Research. The award demonstrates Storm ID’s expertise in AI and in driving innovation in Health and Care. We have worked with Storm ID on several projects, and they excel in driving benefit for our Health and Care professionals and the patients they support. Driving innovative AI to improve diagnostics, patient care and treatment pathways is a very exciting opportunity. Scotland’s AI Strategy lays out how Trustworthy, Ethical and Inclusive AI can be used to improve the lives of the people of Scotland, so it is excellent to see Storm ID, a Scottish AI provider developing new solutions in Health and Care.

Note to Editors
Storm ID developed the Lenus Health Platform to support delivery of new digital health services that are continuous, preventative and participatory, helping to transform care pathways for a range of long term conditions including COPD.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde hosts the West of Scotland Innovation Hub which works with NHS, academia and industry to provide test bed infrastructure, leadership and support, gain funding for, and trial innovative digital solutions to key healthcare challenges. The Hub supports a number of Artificial Intelligence projects and wider digital service developments.

NHSX is a joint unit of teams from the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and Improvement, driving forward the digital transformation of health and social care. www.nhsx.nhs.uk.

The Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) is a unique partnership between patient groups, government bodies, industry and NHS bodies, working together to streamline the adoption of new innovations in healthcare. www.england.nhs.uk/aac.

The National Institute for Health and Research (NIHR) provides the people, facilities, and technology that enable research to thrive. www.nihr.ac.uk.