Circle Health Group is first private healthcare provider to roll out Phio Engage

A partnership focused on innovation in patient care

Circle Health Group is the first healthcare provider to launch Phio Engage, a digital self-management care app. The group went live with Phio Engage on 9 June 2021, making it available to a population of 1.1m people.

Phio Engage empowers musculoskeletal patients to manage their own care, providing a tailored exercise programme, tracking progress and supporting faster recovery. It allows the clinician complete transparency to support the patient as necessary, rather than routinely. Uniquely, Phio Engage users can customise the level and intensity of the programme to suit their needs. 

Circle Health Group, the UK’s largest independent hospital provider, will offer Phio Engage as one of the products in their integrated care service. This will allow patients rapid access to physiotherapy management and a digital alternative to Physioline (its telephone-based physiotherapy assessment and advice service). Using Phio Engage offers a convenient solution to suitable patients by eliminating the need to attend an NHS physio department or schedule a telephone appointment with the physiotherapy team.

Providing good outcomes for patients

The group prides itself on being innovative and technology-driven and, recognising the shift towards virtual care, is clearly seeing the benefit of integrating new technology into robust pathways and providing good outcomes for patients. It launched Phio Access last year, so adding Phio Engage to its product offering allows the group to provide a completely digital care pathway for musculoskeletal patients.

“We launched Phio Access in March 2020 and we’ve built our relationship with EQL over the last 18 months,” said Zara Thomas, Business Systems Analyst at Circle Health Group. “We have mutual respect for one another and for what we bring to the table as a partnership."

Amanda Phillips, Executive Director for Integrated Care at Circle Health Group explains: “We’ve worked with EQL collaboratively to launch Phio Engage. Our clinical leads looked at how we could develop our service using EQL's digital solution and which patients would benefit.”

“EQL has developed an impressive platform.  Patients feel that Phio Engage is intuitive, which encourages them to engage with it,” said Amanda. 

“Adding Phio Engage to our product offering is helping us to provide good outcomes for musculoskeletal patients. Clinicians report having really engaging conversations with their  patients on the chat function and patients are using it on a daily basis, completing the exercises and seeing marked improvements in their health."

EQL is keen to acknowledge Circle Health Group for recognising the potential of Phio.

Jason Ward, EQL's CEO and Co-founder said: “Circle Health Group was the first to deliver Phio Access into the market and it’s now rated the number one MSK app in the country by Orcha. We’re continuing our partnership and Circle Health Group is continuing their journey of market-leading innovation by taking Phio Engage to market as the first provider.”