Feedback secures funding for Oldham pilot

Feedback has secured £50,000 in funding to initiate a Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) pathway pilot with the Oldham CDC, it announced on Thursday, managed by the Northern Care Alliance.

The AIM-traded firm said the funding, obtained under NHS England's CDC programme, came after successful pilots at the Amersham CDC in Buckinghamshire and a pan-regional pilot across Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire ICS, as it announced on 19 December.

Under the new contract, Feedback would provide advisory services to the Oldham CDC until 31 March, focusing on pathways development and deploying its leading symptom-based pathway tool, Bleepa.

On meeting initial milestones, Feedback would assist Oldham CDC in seeking additional funding from the 2024-2025 NHS budget to expand the pilot.

The aim was to integrate Bleepa and establish a live breathlessness pathway for patients, drawing insights from ongoing pilots at Amersham CDC and BOB ICS.

That expansion followed the success of the ongoing breathlessness pathway pilot at Queen Victoria Hospital (QVH) and the Sussex Integrated Care System (Sussex ICS).

“We are gaining momentum in the CDC space following the funding support released by NHSE,” said chief executive officer Dr Tom Oakley.

“Each additional site builds the evidence base for wider rollout and helps convince the wider NHS of the unquestionable benefits of the symptom-based, straight-to-diagnostic pathway approach.

“A national conversation is growing around how CDCs can be used to drive down waitlists and demonstrates how the NHS can achieve a return on their capital investments to date in building CDCs.”

Dr Oakley said that was about leveraging the diagnostic outputs of the CDC to drive down waitlists by integrating them into patient pathways.

“We are focussed on further demonstrating the impact of a pathway approach on CDC utilisation and wider patient wait times - by providing multiple service lines and mutual aid delivery models for sharing workforce capacity at a regional basis through the Bleepa platform.

“We continue to have a number of discussions at the local, regional and national levels with NHS bodies and anticipate further updates in the coming months.

“Furthermore, we are encouraged by the increased NHS spending announced in the Spring Budget, highlighting the importance of investing in digital capabilities for the UK healthcare system.”

At 1325 GMT, shares in Feedback were down 4.16% at 115.01p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.