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This week's expert is Tim Jobson, Medical Director of Predictive Health Intelligence, a UK-based consultancy. Tim joins Louise Campbell and Roger Green to share an update on PHI's Somerset UK project and other activities.

The Somerset pilot was designed to help the NHS identify untreated patients at high risk for liver disease and bring them to the office for screening. Tim describes hepatoSIGHT, a tool that "allows clinicians to get their hands on the data and to find patients both for treatment and for clinical trials." He describes it as standard in Somerset, UK, now, and proceeds to share new data about the patient experience. This is a unique program in that providers reach out to tell individual patients they should visit the physician based on information found in their medical records. Interestingly, patient response is overwhelmingly positive. Louise shares data indicating that 94% of individuals located by the NHS in this manner visited their GPs. Six in ten respondents rated their satisfaction with the process, giving it a mean of 4.8 on a 5-point scale. Tim also shared some preliminary modeling suggesting that sustained use of hepatoSIGHT could increase clinical trial participation as much as 50-fold if trial sites had the capacity to take all these patients.

Based on the results of the pilot, hepatoSIGHT is now standard throughout the Somerset region and is being evaluated for broader use. Tim and Louise both point out that this represents a major advance in the applied use of preventive hepatology. In all, this is a warming, affirming look at whether and how patients know they benefit from what we ask them to do and share.