Evergreen Life GP services and wellness app has won the Partnership with the NHS: Primary Care Award at Medilink’s Healthcare Business Awards 2020 for the North of England.
Manchester-based digital health company, Evergreen Life, has been recognised for its contribution to improving efficiencies within primary care in the north region. The award highlights the significant benefits that Evergreen Life has achieved through its partnership in collaboration with the NHS. The company was also shortlisted for the Advances in Digital Healthcare Award. Medilink UK, who ran the event, is the largest representative body for the Health Technology sector in the UK.
About Evergreen Life
Evergreen Life is an NHS-assured provider of GP services and wellness app that lets people own and control their health information, driving informed healthcare and giving people the best chance of staying well.
Over 750,000 users have completed 33 million NHS transactions, including ordering repeat prescriptions and booking GP appointments. This is helping to deliver significant cost savings to the NHS through providing patients with a more efficient and convenient access to services.
Alongside viewing their GP record, app users can curate an overview of their wellness, considering health not just as absence of disease, but together with factors like nutrition, mood, life satisfaction, and activity levels.
In his award acceptance, CEO and Founder of Evergreen Life, Stephen Critchlow, reflected on the company’s key vision of empowering the individual to control their own health and care:
“[Evergreen Life] started with the simple concept that most organisations don’t necessarily think about you until you’re sick. Our approach is to focus on the person – let them own their health record, rather than the organisation, so they can take it with them wherever they go.
In this country, we spend over 20 years sick at the end of our lives – why is that? We want to focus on the person in those early years to help them be well, by giving them access to the right health information at the right time.”
Partnership with the NHS
After creating a robust, user design-driven platform, Evergreen Life partnered with the NHS to connect to every GP in England. The aim was to provide a solution for all people regardless of their primary care system or CCG. Evergreen Life partnered with NHS England to be the first solution to link to all major GP IT systems through the GPSoC framework, partnering with NHS England, NHS Digital and all major primary care IT providers.
If patients wanted to interact with primary care before Evergreen Life, they could only use the solution designed by their GP system, meaning they had to know which software their practice used. In some cases, this was only a website platform rather than a website and app provider. Providers also isolated healthcare away from overall wellbeing activities, so these solutions only prioritised the management of existing conditions.
Evergreen’s one platform allows all patients in England to be in control of their GP information and share it with carers. Everyone can add their own personal health information to own their most accurate, up-to-date record. And by incorporating their wellness information, users are empowered to self-manage their own care independently.
A truly person-led solution
Stephen also commented that “throughout my career as a hospital pharmacist, I’ve seen huge improvements in health when systems have been designed with the person in mind.”
App user, Ingrid Brindle, adds that: “Patients make themselves well, but I wouldn’t be able to manage my health properly without having access to all my information. Being able to go online through Evergreen, I can look at my consultant letters, test results, consultation notes, referrals. It allows me to get a real comprehensive picture of what’s going on with my health and helps me manage it better.”
Providing access to personalised, up-to-date information, Evergreen Life was recognised for its person-led solution that empowers people to feel more in control to make self-care decisions.
The app is available to download for FREE on both iOS and Android devices. Download the app here.
