How the Sciensus blood monitoring service is easing the burden on the NHS

When the NHS Commercial Team at Sciensus were approached by an NHS trust that was struggling to maintain its blood monitoring service, it led them to develop a process to communicate with the trust’s patients to help manage patient compliance with blood tests. Cayleigh Taylor and Debbie Goodwin from the team share how this scalable solution can free up capacity in the NHS and mitigate the risk of a patient’s prescription being delayed due to no bloods.

Why this service is needed

Blood testing is required in many clinical areas before a patient’s renewal prescription can be written. When a hospital or NHS trust’s blood monitoring process is not working efficiently or is under strain and a patient is not compliant with getting their blood taken, it can lead to late prescriptions and the risk of patients missing doses of their medication.

A year ago Sciensus was asked to come up with a solution that mitigated this risk to patients. The result was the creation of a trial process to write to patients and send them a text on behalf of the hospital to ask them to get their bloods done. Within three months, the trust that had been experiencing the problem saw a 30 per cent increase in adherence of patients getting their blood taken on time.

Having seen the positive outcome of the trial, Debbie and Cayleigh realised the service could work on a national level. A pilot was launched in Northampton in November 2024, to create a scalable service to ease the admin burden on the NHS. Targeted NHS workshops were held to ensure the voice of the customer was at the forefront of any solution created.

How the service works

When a trust signs up to the service, it is determined which clinical areas it will be used in as it can be broken down into different specialties. Once a start date has been confirmed, all patients within the service are notified via text about the blood monitoring service and the benefit it has of keeping their service constant.

Three weeks prior to a patient’s prescription being due to be requested, Sciensus sends a text asking them to get their blood testing done if they haven’t already in preparation for the hospital writing their renewal prescription.

Future goals and the positives for the NHS

Debbie said: “The intention is to use the foundation we have got to develop additional features based on the NHS needs, and utilising all of digital assets.

She added: “Our goal is to develop this service to ease the burden of the NHS. We want to have the data to evidence and impact on the reduction of late prescriptions and the reduction of missed and delayed medication doses. We want to positively impact the space where a patient’s delayed bloods impacts the workflow in the hospital and the urgency with which prescriptions are received and processed on our side.”