Sprink's Winter Newsletter

Contents

1. Highlights and future plans for 2025 to 2028
2. Update on PerEmpo and plans for 2025.
3. Spotlight on the Industry Partnership Development Programme in 2025.
4. News from the Global Centre of Excellence in Healthy Food Environments.
5. 2025 Global Forum on Creating Health Through Understanding Value.

Highlights and future plans?

Highlights over?the last five?years

Over the last five years our main goal at Sprink has been to raise awareness and to build momentum around two areas:?

1. Person-Centred Value-Based Health Care (PCVBHC): ?how we prioritise understanding individual priorities and create truly personalised measures of quality and effectiveness.
2. Healthy Food Environments (HFE): how we create Healthy Food Environments in our health care systems and wider society.? ?

We would like to highlight some important milestones over this five year period:

• In partnership with our Communities of Experts, Industry Advisory Panels and collaborating organisations, we have published our two PCVBHC Research Reports.?We hope you find these helpful in sharing the vision for PCVBHC and the practical steps to implement PCVBHC.?
• Together with our Faculties, we have launched two Education Programmes:?(i) PCVBHC Education Programme and (ii) HFE Education Programme.?So far, over 200 people have taken part in the Education Programmes.?

• In partnership with the University of Melbourne and Dental Health Services Victoria, we delivered the?2024 Australasian Forum on PCVBHC, with over 250 attendees.?

• Working with the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative and Harvard University we have been able to create proposed nutrition competencies for medical students and trainee physicians, which was recently?published in JAMA Network Open.???

• Through our Partnership Development Programme, we have supported the development and recent launch of a novel partnership between a leading pharmaceutical company and a leading academic medical centre, focused on value creation.???

• Developing our novel PerEmpo technology.? PerEmpo enables the capture of people’s values and goals, measurement of the impact of people’s health on living according to their values and working towards achieving their goals and aggregation of the data for use by leadership teams.? PerEmpo is now being used in seven hospitals across the UK, USA and Australia and we are working with three pharmaceutical companies to explore its inclusion in clinical trials.???

Our plans for 2025 to 2028

As we prepare for the next three years, our mission remains the same: Creating Health Through Understanding and Personalising Value.?Our activity will evolve to a focus on scaling selected existing products, while investing in our R&D to create new products.? Our focus areas:?

• PerEmpo.? We aim to scale the use of PerEmpo.? We hope this will be through expanding use of PerEmpo with our existing partners and introducing PerEmpo to new partners.? All partners using PerEmpo will benefit from access to our PCVBHC Education Programme.?Our R&D will focus on introducing a new functionality called PerEmpo AI.?

• Industry-Health Care System Partnership Development Programme.?We aim to gradually scale this programme, working with pharmaceutical companies, food companies and leading health care systems – all focused on building strategic partnerships to understand value, create value and evidence value.?

• HFE Education Programme and Global Prize.?We aim to scale participation in our HFE Education Programme.? We will launch, together with our partners, a new global prize in the area of HFE – watch this space!? Our R&D will focus on a developing a novel product, using advanced AI capabilities, to support the development of Healthy Food Environments.?

• Global Forum.?We are organising a Global Forum?in?December 2025,?taking place in Edinburgh.?It will focus on “Creating health through understanding and personalising value.”? The Forum will have four key themes – (i) prevention, (ii) personalisation, (iii) partnerships and (iv) AI.?

Update on PerEmpo and plans for 2025

Over the past couple of years, the Sprink team has been exploring how we could develop technology that supports the implementation of Person-Centred Value-Based Health Care (PCVBHC). ?In particular, we have been looking at how we could create technology that moves us beyond Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) to the true personalisation of our measures of quality and effectiveness.?

Launching PerEmpo and initial findings

Earlier this year, we launched PerEmpo, the first phase of our technology designed to personalise care and empower people. Upon launching PerEmpo, our ambition was to work with a small community of organisations to begin using the technology, to work together to overcome challenges and to share our learning and results. ?We have been able to work with 12 organisations across France, UK, Switzerland, USA and Australia, covering a very wide range of diseases and diverse health care settings – from community services, to acute hospitals, to pharmaceutical companies, to integrated systems focused on chronic disease management.? The findings have been phenomenal – we really can see the power of truly personalising our measures of quality and effectiveness. ?Indeed, this is the only way we can truly determine value. ?Therefore, not only is this essential for guiding appropriate care and appropriate use of resources but it is also critical for optimising how we communicate the value of products and services and ultimately how we build sustainable, high value health care systems.?

Looking ahead to 2025

In 2025, Sprink will continue its focus on PerEmpo, working with our existing partners and welcoming new partners. ?We will have a particular focus on forming small, international Communities of Practice (CoP), with organisations in each CoP using PerEmpo, working together to share their learning, overcoming challenges together and sharing their findings. We will focus on the following areas:?

• Cancer.?
• Cardiovascular and Respiratory.
• Neurology and Psychiatry.
• Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity.?
• General – this is shaping up to be a mixed group of clinical areas that do not?fit into one of the above.?

If this work interests you, please do get in touch with the PerEmpo team via: [email protected]

Join our Industry?Partnership Development Programme in 2025

Over the last 50 years, innovations from the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries have contributed enormously to the advances in disease management that many countries have witnessed. However, interaction between companies and health care systems is largely transactional, often adversarial and typically focused on volume of sales. ?

We are facing an epidemic of non-communicable disease - with the food we are eating being a significant cause. Supporting people to eat healthily receives a tiny fraction of the attention we give to treating disease. Furthermore, health care systems and food companies rarely have any interaction and indeed food companies have not historically had a recognised role in population health.? ?

Vision: developing new ways of working?

At Sprink, we have been trying to explore how we can support an evolution – so that pharmaceutical companies, medical technology companies and food companies, work with health care systems, to develop new ways of working, focused on creating, evidencing and sharing accountability for real world value. These partnerships are not about making short term financial returns but instead explore how we can create a future where commercial success aligns with the true creation of value for individual citizens. This is in everyone’s interest.? ?

Creating value through the Partnership Development Programme

In line with the above, we have developed a Partnership Development Programme, which has supported a number of pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and health care systems in Europe to build partnerships, with the sole intent of developing new ways of working that create value and evidence that value creation. ?These have been very successful.? We have also applied the Partnership Development Programme to health care systems and food companies. ?This has been more difficult – which we think is down to there being significant caution, anxiety and inexperience, from both sides (the health care system side and the industry side), in working together to explore how to create value. ?This must change if we are to revolutionise disease prevention.? ?

Join the Partnership Development Programme in 2025

In 2025, we will open the Partnership Development Programme for three pharmaceutical companies, one food company and four health care systems (hospitals/community services/integrated systems). ?These can come from anywhere in the world. ?The programme will pair together one company and one health care system with the ultimate aim of supporting the creation of four partnerships, focused on working together to create and evidence real world value. ??

The highlights of the Programme:?

• A tried and tested methodology that has previously delivered successfully.?
• Targeted at senior leaders from health care systems and the industry. ?All participating organisations must have endorsement from the CEO.?
• A structured method, designed to build trust, co-create the partnership content and capture the final plan in a partnership charter.?
• Expert senior staff from Sprink that facilitate the process.?
• Opportunities to come together as a whole cohort to share learning and progress and to overcome challenges.?
• Opportunity to write-up the work for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.?
• A plan to share the findings from the work at ISPOR 2026.?

Key dates

• January 2025. ?Website launched and application process opens.?
• March 2025. ?Application period closes.?
• Mid-April 2025. ?Successful organisations announced.?
• Mid-May 2025. ?In-person meeting in London for all successful organisations.?
• Programme will then run for 12 months, following the structured methodology. ? ?

Advance expressions of interest can be shared by emailing Strategic Partnerships: [email protected] If you would like to arrange an informal discussion with a senior member of the Sprink team, please also contact Dr Thomas Kelley, CEO of Sprink.?? ? ??

Global Centre of Excellence in? Healthy Food Environments

The Global Centre of Excellence in Healthy Food Environments works to support the provision of healthy, delicious, affordable, environmentally sustainable, and ethical food to patients, staff and visitors in health care settings and to people in our wider society. ?We focus on (i) educating leaders in hospitals?and?health care systems, industry, public health organisations and government, (ii) qualitative research to inform policy and strategy around food, and (iii) convening organisations and individuals in virtual or in-person gatherings for mutual education, inspiration and networking.

JAMA publication: Nutrition competencies for American doctors

In September,?our latest research paper, which recommends food and nutrition competencies for US medical students and physician trainees, was published in JAMA Network Open.?

The study was?conducted in partnership with the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative and Harvard University. Sprink designed and delivered the research methodology under the leadership of Dr. Ed Maile, Associate Director at the Global Centre of Excellence in Healthy Food Environments. Using a modified-Delphi process, the team reached expert consensus on 36 recommended competencies. These span key areas such as foundational nutritional knowledge, assessment and diagnosis, public health, and collaborative treatment approaches.??The competencies aim to equip doctors with the skills needed to effectively support patients in making healthier food choices, improving both individual and population health outcomes.

Reflecting on the publication, Dr Ed Maile said, “It was a privilege to work on this vital project with the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative and Harvard. Empowering doctors to provide effective support to patients to make healthy food choices is essential if we are to address the crisis of obesity and diet-driven chronic disease. This paper marks a meaningful step forward on this journey, and we are excited to continue this collaboration through the development of a Nutrition Education Repository, which we will release further details about in 2025.”

To learn more about Sprink’s expertise in research and education, or to discuss how we could support your organisation with any other aspect of food and health, please contact Dr Edward Maile.

Read the JAMA paper for free

Register your interest in the 2025 Healthy Food Environments Training Programme

The third round of Sprink’s Healthy Food Environments Online Training Programme began?on 7th?October 2024. This interactive, part-time, 12-week online programme equips participants?with both?the theoretical and practical knowledge to implement a Healthy Food Environment in your organisation, e.g. hospital. The Programme comprises a mix of video lectures and interviews, interactive case studies, and collaborative group work. It is delivered by experts from leading institutions such as Oxford University, Imperial College London and NHS England.

We are delighted to have a professionally diverse cohort for?the current round, representing both?the public and private sectors, as well as professionals from health care and education systems. If you would?like to participate in a?cohort in 2025,?please contact Dr. Edward Maile.

Find out more about the Healthy Food Environments Online Training Programme

2025 Global Forum: Creating Health Through Understanding and Personalising Value

Health care systems across the globe are facing unprecedented challenges. Workforce shortages, rising demand, the growing cost of adopting innovation - these are all contributing to strained services and the challenge of delivering equitable, high-quality care. The route to sustainability has to be through a laser focus on the creation of value.

Sprink will be convening a landmark event on:?Creating Health Through Understanding and Personalising Value.?

• Dates: 2 and 3 December 2025?
• Location: Edinburgh, Scotland?

The Forum will bring together over 500 global health care leaders, clinical innovators, industry experts, and patient advocates. We will focus on four key areas:

• Turbocharging prevention. We need a prevention revolution and we need to get moving rapidly and at scale.?We will explore how to incentivise and fund prevention at scale through focusing our health care systems on value.?
• Advancing Person-Centred Value-Based Health Care (PCVBHC). When disease does strike, we need to go beyond standardised guidelines and standardised measures like clinical outcomes, beyond PROMs, beyond PREMs. We will explore practical solutions to truly personalise (i) care (in times of scarcity), (ii) quality measurement, (iii) resource allocation and (iv) measures of effectiveness in clinical trials. This will be through a focus on individual values and goals.?
• Building strategic partnerships.?We will explore the role of strategic partnerships between health care systems and life science companies in developing new ways of working with a focus on creating and evidencing real-world value.?
• AI and innovative technology.?We will showcase the latest AI solutions and innovative technology to support the above three focus areas.

The Forum website will go live in February 2025, with registration opening in March 2025. ?If you would like to register your interest in the Forum and if you would like to discuss any aspect of the event, please contact Dr. Andrea Srur Colombo.