In March 2023, Yma officially kicked off our 3-year partnership with Pathways Alliance Ltd. to support the implementation of the roll out of HealthPathways across Wales. This is the first time HealthPathways has been adopted at a national level and represents ground-breaking territory for all involved.

First developed by Streamliners in Canterbury, New Zealand in 2008, HealthPathways is an international collective of health and social care organisations that collaborate to deliver locally relevant pathways to clinicians. Community members use the HealthPathways platform which includes starter pathways, pathway development tools, and websites for frontline clinicians to refer to at the point of care. Clinicians use local versions of HealthPathways to help them identify, diagnose, treat, and refer citizens for over 1,000 conditions using information and guidance at their fingertips.

HealthPathways is currently in use across New Zealand and Australia and in parts of England. Cardiff and Vale University Health Board were the first in Wales to implement HealthPathways more than three years ago, and they’ve seen a steady increase in users since 2019. The benefits they’ve noted include the lowest ENT referral rates in Wales, a 66% reduction in referrals for MRIs for knees and spines, and the ability to rapidly change clinical pathways to increase value.

Yma’s role in the all-Wales implementation is to engage stakeholders, facilitate training, and enable programme establishment – getting those first 50 pathways up and running so that health boards can GO LIVE with their sites. But we’re not doing it alone. We work closely with PathwaysAlliance, the NHS Wales Planned Care Improvement and Recovery team, as well as most importantly the seven individual health boards. We’re using Lunch & Learn sessions to demonstrate the platform to stakeholders and potential users of the system. We communicate with primary care, national clinical leads, Public Health Wales, and other stakeholders from local to national levels.

On a  recent returned  trip from Australia and New Zealand to speak to and learn from the Streamliners team and the local health systems that have implemented HealthPathways. With more than 50 health care organisations in the HealthPathways Community, we have the opportunity to learn from those who have undertaken the process before, even as we trailblaze our way through a new HealthPathways model for the whole of Wales.

For more information on HealthPathways:

·       See HealthPathways Global for an overview 

·       Email info@healthpathwaysglobal.org or phone +44 20 3519 1964

·      Mathew Mead, Programme Establishment Partner Mathew@dymani.cymru

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