Huma buys MyGP owner

Plans to bring remote monitoring to GPs

Breaking news in the healthtech world this morning. Huma, the fast growing remote patient monitoring company based in London, has acquired iPlato Healthcare, which owns the MyGP app.

MyGP is one of the UK’s most popular health apps, giving users a way of managing their dealings with their family doctor - booking appointments, ordering prescriptions, seeing their medical records. Overall, iPlato’s patient engagement software patient engagement software covers a network of 26.6m patients across nearly 3,000 NHS primary care organisations, according to the statement from Huma.

Huma, which raised $130m in new backing in March last year, is engaged in using smartphones and sensors for the remote monitoring of patients. One example - it helps cardiac surgeons assess patients on the waiting list for operations, and claims its technology was instrumental in spotting and reprioritising nearly 10% of their patients on waiting lists who were deteriorating.

I first encountered the company, then known as Medopad, when I filmed a trial where they were working with China’s Tencent to develop an AI system to monitor symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. That kind of project appears to be a long way from turning into something that can be deployed by doctors but during the pandemic a Huma smartphone app for monitoring Covid patients has been put into use.

An NHS study found that the app was well received by most patients and there was some evidence that it produced better outcomes for them.

But Huma says remote patient monitoring is still not widely used in primary care. Its acquisition of iPlato and the MyGP app should enable it to start offering its services to thousands of GPs.

The terms of today’s deal have not been announced. Huma says the two companies will continue to operate independently but will combine their expertise across primary and secondary care.

On Friday, look out for the latest in my series of Healthy Conversations. This week’s guest is the CEO of Eva Healthcare Maddy Phipps-Taylor, who was a Downing Street health policy advisor when David Cameron was Prime Minister. She has plenty to say about what she calls a “seismic shift” in the amount of medical data and how to deal with it.