Ada is an AI-powered personalised health platform. Via a free app, individuals can understand possible causes of their symptoms and navigate to appropriate care; they can also share their assessment with a GP prior to consultation. Ada can help the NHS in two ways:

  1. Empower patients to self-care for minor illnesses by providing access to high quality medical information within Ada’s app, thereby reducing patient demand for GP and A+E services
  2. Triage patients to ensure they get the right care at the right time in the right place, thereby releasing GP capacity and improving care outcomes

PROBLEM(S) TO SOLVE

There are five problems Ada is aiming to address:

  1. Correct asymmetry in information between patient and doctor
  2. Empower patients
  3. Provide right care at the right time
  4. Offer high quality health/medical guidance
  5. Digitise customer journey (improve experience)

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Context

Ada provides a tool to help reduce demand on an overstretched healthcare system at a time when consumer expectations are increasing in line with other aspects of their lives, where technology is providing improved customer experience and convenience in areas like banking, shopping and leisure.  Ada is used in pre-primary care and primary care settings. It is being tested in the A & E setting later in 2018.

Availability/regulatory status

Ada is currently available to consumers for free and partners with healthcare payers and providers. It is classed as a Type 1 medical device.

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Evidence to date

Ada has been tested in the following ways:

  1. Internal testing with clinicians and partners
  2. Internal validation studies
  3. Patient experience feedback

Ada has continuous improvement activities, where a set of symptoms are used to compare Ada against practicing NHS GPs. The company also has a team of medical doctors who continually monitor and make changes based on feedback from patients and randomly select cases from the 25,000 assessments completed each day to verify guidance.

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Impact for user

Ada empowers patients to self-care for minor illnesses by providing convenient and easy access to high quality health information. Ada also helps patients understand their condition better, improves adherence and their interactions with their healthcare professionals, thereby improving overall health outcomes.

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Impact for healthcare system

Ada reduces patient demand for GP and A&E services and helps triage patients to ensure they get the right care at the right time in the right place, thereby releasing healthcare capacity and improving care outcomes.

Overall value assessment

Ada has been recognised as an important tool to empower patients to take more ownership of their health, reducing demand for healthcare services, and improving health outcomes.  As the app integrates more data from sources such as lab test results, genetic tests and wearables, it will be able to identify and track health patterns and flag up possible issues in advance becoming more and more like an ongoing health guide, supporting long-term monitoring of health data to enable predictive and proactive care.