Government makes HealthUnlocked social prescription service available through Digital Marketplace
System accepted onto G Cloud, bringing increased flexibility and cost reduction for NHS trusts
HealthUnlocked has been selected by the UK Government to offer social prescription services to public-sector organisations after being accepted onto its Digital Marketplace, G Cloud.
The Digital Marketplace has been designed to bring increased flexibility and cost reduction for public-sector organisations looking for people or technology for digital projects.
The system supports adoption of cloud services across the whole of the public sectors, simplifying how they buy services and providing options that can be easily scaled up or down, based on an organisation’s needs.
With HealthUnlocked now available on the system - the NHS, councils and other public-sector organisations can choose its digital ‘social prescription’ services for their local populations, supporting them to bring about improvements in self health management and reducing reliance on clinical services.
In recent months there has been growing evidence on the benefits of social prescriptions and digital health management tools, alongside a rise in organisations seeking to deploy these within their local populations.
This HealthUnlocked digital tool supports doctors and other professionals to ‘prescribe’ a full range of services directly from their care systems.
Each prescription includes the NHS, social care services, alongside charities and voluntary sector and - in what sets it apart from other providers - it offers free peer-to-peer and expert support from relevant HealthUnlocked online communities.
This is important as use of HealthUnlocked communities have been shown to support people to feel more confident in managing their health, use clinical services less, and have more-positive interactions with doctors and health professionals.
Jorge Armanet, chief executive of HealthUnlocked, said: “Being an approved UK Government supplier cements our position as a leader in social prescription technology.
“Working together with the public sector we can support them to use digital technology solutions to activate people to better manage their own health and reduce reliance on pressured clinical services.
“We are seeing this service become increasingly popular in all sectors and the customers we have within this field growing rapidly.”
HealthUnlocked provides social prescription services to a range of public-sector organisations, including South Devon and Torbay Clinical Commissioning Group.