Could you start by talking about the different products and services you have in development this year?
We've got loads of new things going on. We’ve been building a selection of questionnaires to be used for patients with different diseases, or risk factors for disease. Think asthma, or COPD, or anything from body mass index calculators to depression. They allow patients to report risk factors such as whether they smoke or not, their height and weight, and they also gather data by ethnicity.
These questionnaires can be texted to patients, and they can complete them securely from their phone. They allow the patient to report on their health, or things that might affect their health, or update their medical records remotely at a time that suits them.
Health care doesn't involve just going into a GP practice and having a conversation face to face. It's a dynamic, ongoing conversation, and tech provision needs to reflect that. People don't have to take time out of their busy lives to engage with their primary healthcare provider. And from a practice point of view, it saves time and money. You can automate gathering all that information that usually takes a long time. So then, when you have face to face time with patients, you can spend it talking about what matters with their health.. It also allows practices to maximise the QOF points, allowing them to evidence the things that benefit their patients.
In other news, we are in the process of developing a widget or textbox on a practice website, where a patient can submit their question - like an admin request or a request for their healthcare information, which can then be reviewed and actioned by clinician or administrator. Since it’s patient-facing, we’re working on making something like this accessible. Practice websites are an easy place to direct patients to, especially when the 8am rush for phone calls comes in every morning - you can put a pre-recorded message at the beginning of the call to redirect people to the website.
And what sorts of improvements are being made to existing services?
We are going on a positive journey. There were several features we have in Mjog that deliver really good functionality. But they can be hard to use. So we've been re-building and redesigning large parts of functionality to improve the user experience and allow people to engage with it more easily.
What kinds of challenges for users are being tackled?
We’ve been investing a lot in migrating services to the cloud. Previously Mjog would run on a laptop or a computer in a GP practice. Now that the investment is taking place, there's no overhead on the practice side - now you just buy the licence, login, and get set up. That’s very important, since hybrid working is now a normal part of daily practice for so many staff.
How important is that flexibility to staff working in the practice?
Massively important. Elements of remote work are here to stay in primary care, so it's essential that the tools we build are accessible from wherever a clinician is working.
What about the broader company focus for this year? Do you have any goals in mind?
Of course our ongoing goal is to carry on providing convenient, affordable, scalable healthcare to digitally enable GP practices. In 2022 it's all about expanding the Mjog offering. With the foundation blocks we already have we can build and add different components, and after being acquired by Livi, the possibilities are endless.
We know that there's still a huge demand on GP practices for their services. So part of our work is continuing to help practices manage and respond to that demand. Keeping GP workloads manageable and safe is paramount.
Lastly, are there any upcoming challenges in the next year that Mjog is preparing for?
COVID has massively accelerated digital health. There has been over a decade’s worth of advancements in less than two years. It’s showing us that you don't need to be able to see a patient with your own two eyes to provide them with good healthcare.
There are a number of funding initiatives going on when it comes to things like remote care and home-monitoring, which we are looking forward to tapping into. The idea that patient-doctor communication is a two-way street is really taking hold.
As we look to the future, the other thing we want to be doing is to be impacting healthcare positively; not only providing a tool for a GP to collect information from the patient or vice versa, but actually using our suite of products to facilitate better healthcare.
Part of expanding remote care is about trusting patients to be able to do that and giving them the tools they need to work with their GPs and managing their conditions. As it should be. Patients shouldn't be treated like they don’t have a vested interest in reporting outcomes accurately, or an interest in staying healthy. A change in attitude and an expansion of possibilities is something we are excited to bring with us into the next year.
