Interview with Dr Simon Bourne, Co-Founder at My mhealth: Digital Therapeutics For Long-Term Conditions

My mhealth is a digital therapeutics platform that offers digital support and interventions to all patients and assists with the move to remotely monitored healthcare.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
I was a COPD consultant at Southampton General Hospital, looking after patients who were coming to the end stage of their condition, and it was hard to make an impact other than with treatment to support their symptoms. In 2008 we had around 6,000 patients in the commissioning area and there seemed to be a real opportunity to do something different and make a difference, so we moved from a hospital setting to the community which was unusual then.

We started off with educational materials and a website that included relevant information on the condition at hand. And after just a month we couldn’t believe how much better patients were because they were better informed. It was from this point that we knew we had a product that could make a difference in the healthcare industry.
 

 

What can we hope to see from my mhealth in the future?

 
We are releasing 2 new products this year to support people with cancer and one to help those preparing for surgery.

We are currently exploring new ways to help patients by adding additional functionality to the applications to help support them intelligently through behavioural change techniques and working with the University of Southampton and Bristol to develop products that will predict if patients with COPD and Asthma are likely to exacerbate. We are launching our COPD app in New Zealand next month and our cardiac app, myHeart across Western Europe during 2021/22.
 

How has the company evolved during the pandemic?

 
We realised the importance, more than ever, that our application delivers to patients with long-term conditions as many of their conventional reviews were cancelled and they found it difficult to access their clinician.

We built a new product in just 5 weeks, known as the COVID virtual ward to help support the monitoring of patients at home using pulse oximeters. NHS teams admitted and monitored 1000s of people during the second wave. One of the greatest contributions was in the area of cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation where almost all services we cancelled. Using our app the NHS managed to deliver of 275,000 rehabilitation and education sessions in a single year during the pandemic.