Heim: Supporting community nurses to deliver more care at home
Find out how Heim is giving community nursing teams the technology they need to spend less time on administration and more time with patients delivering care at home.
As demand for community healthcare continues to grow, community nursing teams are under increasing pressure. Staff are caring for more patients with increasingly complex needs, while navigating systems that were never designed for the realities of delivering care in people’s homes.
Drawing on her experience as an emergency medicine doctor, Dr Elle Clarke co-founded Heim to give community nursing teams the technology they need to spend less time on administration and more time with patients. By automating the routine work that takes up to 40% of staff time, Heim is reduces strain on the workforce while supporting more patients to receive care where they want it most: at home.
Now an NHS Innovation Accelerator fellow, Elle is focused on scaling Heim across the NHS and supporting more community teams to deliver safe, sustainable care.
What is Heim and what problem does it solve?
Heim has developed a technology platform specifically for community nursing teams delivering care in patients’ homes.
Unlike many existing digital systems, which were built around hospital-based care, Heim has been designed from the ground up for clinicians working in the community. The platform helps nurses plan their day more effectively, get to the right patient at the right time and reduce the administrative burden that often takes them away from delivering care.
By supporting more efficient community care, Heim aims not only to improve productivity but also to help NHS organisations respond to growing demand while making better use of an increasingly stretched workforce.
“We have our own nurses who work across the country, and we built a technology stack from that experience to get them to the right place at the right time while reducing the administrative burden associated with their job. We’re now bringing that technology to the NHS.”
“We have our own nurses who work across the country, and we built a technology stack from that experience to get them to the right place at the right time while reducing the administrative burden associated with their job. We’re now bringing that technology to the NHS.”
What was your inspiration and motivation?
Before founding Heim, Elle worked as an emergency medicine doctor, where she saw first-hand the impact hospital admissions could have on patients. This fed into her motivation to find better ways to deliver healthcare at home where people often have better outcomes.
Having witnessed patients who could potentially have remained at home experiencing hospital-acquired infections, losing mobility and no longer being able to return to independent living, she knew something had to change.
This is why Heim was created, to equip community nurses with technology that enables more people to receive safe, effective care at home.
Why did you become a fellow?
Over the past 18 months, Heim has been working with NHS organisations to demonstrate the value of its technology.
Joining the NHS Innovation Accelerator will provide the expertise, networks and support needed to scale Heim across the NHS in a sustainable way.
“We wanted the expertise to help us grow safely, so that we bring real benefit to the organisations deploying our technology and to the people who work within them.”
Looking ahead
For Heim, success isn’t measured simply by organisational adoption, but by the difference it makes to the people delivering community care every day. Community nursing teams are facing growing demand alongside significant workforce pressures, with more care being delivered outside hospital and fewer staff available to provide it.
Over the course of the fellowship, Elle hopes to see Heim adopted across every region in England, before expanding internationally in the years beyond.
Ultimately, Heim’s vision is to ensure community nurses have technology that works with them, rather than against them, helping them spend less time on administration and more time delivering the care that patients value most.
“We’ve got increasing demand, we’ve got the shift from hospital into the community, and we’ve got a declining workforce. No technology is currently designed for what community nurses do. I want to see how many nurses’ lives we can change. How many people can we keep in the workforce? And from that, how much more benefit can we bring to patients?”
Want to find out more? Visit the innovation page where you can contact the innovator directly, or check out their website.
