FOI Ref: 0057FOI2021

25^th August 2020

Freedom of Information Act 2000 – Request for Information

We are pleased to respond to your request for information and our response is set out below:

Request/ Response

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. 

Please can you supply the following information:

• Within your organisation or any service you commission, is there any use of the following: remote healthcare monitoring for COPD patients or patients with Heart Failure (Definition for clarity: a patient has either an app, a website link and / or vital sign monitoring where they do this in one place and a clinician reviews their data in another)

Telemedicine is managed by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (STH) and we would advise you contact them for this information, email – sth.foi@nhs.net.

The CCG is in the early planning stages of using MyCOPD, we currently have access to 1600 licences.  

• Should there be use of the above listed programs, when these contracts due for review/renewal – and where possible please supply the provider company name.

For telemedicine you will need to contact STH.

For MyCOPD, the licences were allocated to the CCG following agreement with NHS England (NHSE) and the company. You will need to contact NHSE who manage the contract for this information. The licences we have in Sheffield are ‘for life’.  Once we have allocated a licence to a patient it will be theirs and will not need to be repurchased/ recommissioned again.  There is therefore no contract to renew although there may be work to identify whether to purchase more of the licences once the 1600 have all been used.

Contact details for NHSE - england.contactus@nhs.net (Please write “Freedom of Information” in the subject line).

• In addition can you please tell me in which area of your organisation any similar programs are being used (for example for COVID-19 discharge patients, for patients with diabetes)

There are diabetes patients managed in secondary care using the ‘Freestyle Libre’ blood sugar monitoring system as well as patients with continuous glucose monitoring machines, some of which can provide readings to a remote physician for review and treatment. Further information will need to be obtained from STH.