An innovative app that helps warfarin patients to self-test and stay fully connected to their care teams has recently been approved by NHS Digital to join the NHS App Library, alongside a range of patient health care apps.
The engage app has been approved for its patient self-testing programme for those on warfarin therapy. The programme enables patients to monitor their INR (international normalized ratio) remotely using suitable coagulation measurement instruments such as Roche XS CoaguChek or INRange and send the results directly to their clinician’s decision support software. This seamless flow of data between the patient app and the clinical dashboard allows the care team to review and dose the individual in INRstar and send the results back to them via their engage app in minutes.
The engage app was reviewed by NHS Digital and considered suitable for warfarin patients. The app is now live in the NHS Digital App Library and is available by contacting your anticoagulation clinic or contacting LumiraDx Care Solutions. The NHS Digital App Library contains a range of approved apps that have been clinically and technically tested for safety and effectiveness/to meet certain standards by NHS Digital, with the aim of providing patients, the public and clinicians with a trusted selection of digital health, care and wellbeing applications.
To be considered for inclusion, the engage app underwent NHS Digital’s extremely thorough approval process, to ensure adherence to nine key elements including; clinical safety, security, usability, technical stability and indicators of effect.
engage is already in use by patients in the UK providing them the knowledge, skills and confidence to self-test under the guidance of their care team. This allows them more freedom and independence from regular clinic visits, with those already using the self-testing programme reporting that it ‘’makes life so much easier.”
Hazel Jones, Programme Director Apps & Wearables including Uptake, NHS Digital says: ‘We are really excited to be able to showcase the Engage App in our NHS Apps Library. As the first app of its type to be approved for our NHS Apps Library, the concept of enabling patients to self-care in an assisted environment fits so well with our digital ambitions within the NHS to provide greater choice for patients to manage better health outcomes within the ‘Empower the Person’ and ‘Citizen Health Tech’ initiatives.’
Michael Barritt, Managing Director, LumiraDx Care Solutions UK Ltd adds: ‘This is a very important moment for us as it validates all the hard work we have done over the years to build our software and apps to meet these very exacting standards, so that our customers, users and patients can be certain they are using technology that meets the highest possible standards to ensure their safety and security.’’
The technology behind engage has been developed by the team at LumiraDx Care Solutions who are anticoagulation experts with over 20 years’ experience delivering safe, efficient support software to the NHS in the form of INRstar, the market-leading anticoagulation management software.