Liver disease places a significant burden on the public health. One in nine of the UK population suffers from the condition and it causes over 10,000 premature deaths each year.

Chronic liver diseases commonly progress without symptoms, meaning that often the first time people see a doctor for it. it’s in an emergency situation when treatment options are limited. Individual markers in one-off blood tests often go unnoticed, but when you look back at trends over time, it becomes obvious that something is wrong. In short, the signal is there, but current healthcare IT systems are not built to enable this type of analysis at scale.

In 2019, a clinician from Somerset shared his concerns about undiagnosed liver disease with an expert in healthcare IT. They teamed up with their local hospital, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, and secured funding from the National Institute for Health Research to develop a solution.

They formed Predictive Health Intelligence, and built hepatoSIGHT™, a case-finding search engine that enables clinicians to easily identify people potentially at risk of chronic liver disease by analysing test results over time.

Proactively finding liver disease early enables earlier interventions, meaning better outcomes for patients and a more effective use of resources for the health system.