NHS England and Improvement (NHSEI) is commissioning a digital platform to support weight management services around the country.
Jo Churchill MP, the minister for prevention, public health and primary care, told Parliament this week that it is part of the effort to reduce obesity in England, and that the platform will help GPs in referring eligible patients to specific weight management services.
A discussion paper from NHSEI says the platform will support the procurement of relevant digital services, as part of support for a cohort identified in the NHS Long Term Plan as those with obesity, diabetes and/or hypertension. Digital services to support weight management are already commercially available.
The intention the platform will be free to patients and local services, providing a central access point for 12-week interventions across three levels of intensity: one in which patients receive digital only support; another in which there is some human coaching; and a third in which the human coaching is intensified.
Between them it is estimated they would support approximately 4.6 million adults.
Evidence base plan
The paper says that NHSEI also plans to build an evidence base around the effectiveness of different digital products and ‘what works for whom’. So far, the relative effectiveness of different models has not been fully evaluated.
“Interactive digital technologies with the potential for low cast scalability can be a mean to enable health systems to better manage a population with an increasing prevalence of obesity related co-morbidities,” it says.
“Emerging evidence from the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme suggests some digital providers can perform as well as face-to-face services, with benefits in reaching a younger cohort and offering increased flexibility of access, although there can be significant variation in weight loss achieved through different products.”
The platform is intended to supplement services already commissioned by local authorities, which often have a strong understanding of the needs of their local populations on public health issues.
Image by Jeff Golden, CC BY-SA 2.0
