Digital health consultancy expands to support digital agility and integrated care

Populo Consulting announces new managing director and senior team as part of growth strategy to support NHS organisations develop digital services

Digital health consultancy, Populo Consulting, has announced the appointment of a new managing director as part of an ambitious growth strategy.

The expansion will enable it to support more NHS organisations looking to improve their digital agility and to deploy technology to underpin new models of care and digital delivery for patients.

Jonah Aburrow-Jones is well known in the digital health community, having worked for a wide-range of IT suppliers, intelligence companies, and consultancies for almost 20 years, both in the UK and internationally.

His appointment as managing director at Preston-based Populo comes as the consultancy expands its senior team, refreshes its branding, introduces new services, and opens a London office so that it can better support NHS organisations looking to improve their digital agility and to prepare for the new era of integrated care and digital delivery.

Aburrow-Jones said: “Populo is a full service digital health consultancy. Our approach is non-typical because we work in partnership with clients to solve the problems that they have.

This expansion will enable us to support more organisations as they look to make the most of their IT investments and prepare to adopt the technology that will underpin new models of care and delivery for patients

“Wherever an organisation is on its digital lifecycle we provide the advice and support, solutions and assurance that will get it to where it needs to be.

“This expansion will enable us to support more organisations as they look to make the most of their IT investments and prepare to adopt the technology that will underpin new models of care and delivery for patients.”

Populo was formed two years ago. Since then it has grown rapidly and works with the Salford, Oxford, and Imperial global digital exemplars, the Mersey Care mental health GDE, and the Manchester local health and care record exemplar (LHCRE).

As part of its expansion, Populo has also appointed Gary Davies as client services director.

Davies has joined from Allscripts where he was a senior project manager working with several of the NHS trusts in the North West which have implemented Allscripts. Previously he worked for Integris, SystemC and Ascribe in project management and delivery roles.

Aburrow-Jones said he expected the growing team to be engaged in two key areas; helping NHS organisations to improve their digital agility, and helping community and integrated care organisations with digital transformation projects.

“We have found that many NHS organisations invest millions in a major IT system, only to find that by the time it has been rolled out it has become obsolete or in need of significant optimisation,” he added.

“Our ‘Digital Agility’ service encourages organisations to use their estate in new ways, and then to draw up a strategic plan to fill in gaps in a cost-effective way.

“However, some of our biggest projects at the moment are not advising on systems, but providing input into new models of care.

National policy is focused on integrated care, and we can help to make sure that the technology is in place to support that and that it works properly.”

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