Congratulations to NIA Fellow, Asma Khalil, and the St George’s Pregnancy BP Home Monitoring Team who have scooped the HSJ Award for ‘Using Technology to Improve Efficiency’ with their Home Monitoring of Hypertension in Pregnancy smartphone app (HaMpton).

Asma was announced one of 11 new Fellows selected to join the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) in 2017 at a launch event held in London on 22 November.

Her innovation, HaMpton, enables women to monitor their blood pressure at home and alerts them if they need to attend hospital for further assessment.

Asma, a Consultant Obstetrician at St George’s University Hospitals NHS FT, led the project after having had the idea as a junior doctor.

She said: “It’s such an honour to have been shortlisted with so many other great projects, so we’re delighted to have won! It means so much to be recognised at this level and we hope this helps us to implement the app on a larger scale to benefit more people.

“Having the opportunity to develop this idea at St George’s and make it successful has been great. The project wouldn’t have been successful without the enthusiasm of our team and I’m very proud to have worked with them.”

HaMpton was designed to help reduce the need for pregnant women to make frequent hospital appointments, and to empower them to be involved in their own clinical assessment. After launching in January 2016, the app has helped reduce the number of appointments for hypertension monitoring by 53%, while maintaining the safety of mother and baby.

Jacqueline Totterdell, Chief Executive at St George’s, said: “I’m so proud of the team winning such a prestigious award for their hard work at St George’s. It’s an excellent concept that they’ve turned into a successful app to benefit our patients. Well done to Asma and the team!”

More information about HaMpton is available here.