CW Innovation partnership launches new digital service to transform HIV patient care

Klick digitally connects clinicians and patients in the comfort of their own homes, enabling remote care and communication, which is particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Klick mobile app allows patients to manage appointments, complete health assessments, review results and communicate with their healthcare team while the clinician-facing technology facilitates swift assessment of patients’ needs, providing them with improved access to the most appropriate care.

An innovative new service, Klick, is launching at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in collaboration with ViiV Healthcare, a global specialist HIV company, to transform care for patients with HIV.

Klick, which is part of the CW Innovation programme led by CW+ and the Trust, was co-developed by staff at the Kobler Clinic at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and ViiV Healthcare’s innovation team to integrate with, and enhance, the current HIV service to improve patient care and experience.

The new service is being gradually launched to patients at the Kobler Outpatient Clinic, one of the largest centres of HIV care in Europe, and is then planned to expand to larger patient populations across multiple sites at the Trust in the coming months. The launch follows impressive results generated through a pilot, also in the form of a Joint Working Agreement, which were presented at last year’s British HIV Association (BHIVA) Annual Congress and demonstrated exceptionally high levels of patient satisfaction and quality of care.

Dr David Asboe, Clinical Director for HIV at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, added: “We have made significant advances in the care of people living with HIV, but this work is not finished. In many regards, it has just begun. Our combined efforts have shifted HIV from an acute to a predominantly long-term condition. This brings its own challenges and responsibilities. It is our duty to understand the emerging needs of our patient cohort, to design care that is responsive to these needs, and to provide care in a sustainable fashion.

“We must achieve these things with a backdrop of the challenges we now also face with COVID-19. Health systems are under more pressure than ever and using new technologies in a way that genuinely enables our services to evolve is absolutely critical to ensuring we can continue to improve how we deliver quality care to our patients. The collaboration between the Trust and ViiV Healthcare has provided an opportunity to produce an evidence-based and practical service concept that provides a strong platform on which we can build.”