Hurley Group partners sell eConsult to global tech firm

The digital triage platform eConsult – created by NHS GPs and recently valued at £41.5m – has been bought by a global healthcare technology company.

The online platform which is used by over 3,200 practices across the country, was sold to British healthcare AI and digital solutions firm Huma today.

The deal size was undisclosed, but Pulse understands that eConsult was valued at $55m (about £41.5m) at the last funding round.

The platform, which was developed in 2013 by super practice Hurley Group in South East London, allows patients to submit their symptoms to a GP electronically, as well as offering around the clock NHS self-help information, signposting to services and a symptom checker.

Its co-founders included former RCGP chair Professor Dame Clare Gerada, former NHS England director of primary care Dr Arvind Madan and Dr Murray Ellender, eConsult’s current CEO. The platform was owned by its co-founders as well as external investors before being sold to Huma.

Dr Ellender said: ‘The NHS knows it needs to do much more with technology to help both patients and clinicians.

‘We have strong roots in both primary and secondary care and have delivered over 50m digital consultations in the NHS.

‘Joining forces with Huma is an amazing opportunity for both our users and our teams to accelerate the shift to digital first healthcare.’

The eConsult acquisition follows Huma’s acquisition of iPlato, a UK provider of screening, appointment booking, medicines management and communication tools also used by practices

Huma CEO and founder Dan Vahdat said: ‘This acquisition brings us one step closer to becoming the end-to-end technology platform for the industry to deliver digital-first care at scale seamlessly.

‘We believe that when digital and AI are scaled, they become affordable for both the poor and the rich. Care delivery remains consistent and will help us transition medicine from being reactive to proactive.’

eConsult was developed for the Hurley Group’s fifteen practices in London as an internal scheme ‘to help provide primary care in a timely manner’, and it subsequently spread to practices in Tower Hamlets and then across the UK.

In 2013, the Hurley Group ran a pilot across 133,000 patients in 20 practices encouraging patients to use the practice websites as a ‘click first’ approach to accessing care.

The pilot demonstrated improvement in access, and showed that 40% of patients were managed using the eConsult summary alone, 20% with an additional phone call and 40% needed a face-to-face appointment.

Five years later, Pulse revealed that the super practice was planning to only offer patients face-to-face appointments where necessary, with the remainder to be dealt with via its eConsult online system.

Meanwhile, Huma has also launched a platform for GPs, community and secondary care providers and ICBs to access digital health solutions, including appointment booking, automated prescriptions, screening tools, teleconsultation, remote monitoring and virtual wards.

The Hurley Group was the first partnership to adopt the platform, called Huma Workspace Solutions.

Dame Clare Gerada, GP partner at Hurley Group, said: ‘I’m proud to be part of this exciting initiative to help develop the innovation needed for our future health.

‘The recent Darzi report has stressed the importance of transforming health care and moving from analogue to digital.

‘With the Hurley I envisage us co-designing a range of frontline capabilities that could genuinely transform how care is experienced by patients and delivered by our teams.’