BLOG: How can tech support efforts to re-engage patients with HIV care?
We know undetectable equals untransmittable (U=U), which is why ensuring people with HIV are virally suppressed is essential.
HIV testing plays an important role in helping people know their status and receive the treatment needed to live normal, healthy lives and reduce onward transmission. Initiatives, like National HIV Testing Week, work to raise awareness of the importance of regular testing to reduce the number of people living with undiagnosed HIV and promote early diagnosis. Bolstering efforts to reach 0 new transmissions by 2030, increased awareness of and access to PrEP, is also lowering the risk of HIV negative people contracting HIV from an infected partner.
Yet, according to the UK Health Security Agency, there are more people with HIV in England that have dropped out of care (haven’t been seen for 15 months or more) than remain undiagnosed . This ‘hidden population’ has grown by 75% since the start of the pandemic, taking the current estimate of HIV patients not retained in care to 4,500 .
There are several factors that influence a person’s decision to disengage with care. These individuals are diverse, and their motivations nuanced. Some people are lost to care because they’re members of the migrant community and have fears surrounding deportation. Others have faith-based reasons for discontinuing care. Many patients, especially women, have ‘competing needs’ that make attending appointments and prioritising their own health more challenging. Problematic substance use, mental health, poverty, and stigma are also common factors.
Identifying those at risk of dropping out of care so that timely and targeted interventions can be made, and encouraging people back into care, aren’t straightforward tasks. But they’re essential nonetheless.
While technology doesn’t have all the answers, it does have a supporting role to play in helping services to:
• Obtain fast, accurate insight into HIV patient cohorts
• Automate retention/re-engagement processes
• Facilitate better caseload management
• Support enhanced patient adherence with care pathways
• Deliver more effective patient communication
• Free up resource that can be refocused on at-risk groups
• Improve multi-agency interactions
Over the coming weeks we’ll be focusing on 7 ways technology, like Inform HIV and the Personal Health Record, can help HIV services retain and re-engage patients in care, and in doing so, support efforts to achieve 0 new transmissions by 2030.
So, stay tuned for the next instalment in the series focusing on how fast and accurate understanding of patient cohorts can support better management of loss to follow up in HIV care.
To learn more about how Inform HIV and the PHR can support your service to better manage loss to follow up contact us here.
