2023 The Launch of SONAR CMS

2023 had seen so many achievements for SONAR Case Management System (SONAR CMS). Thank you to the whole team for going above and beyond – maintaining excellent delivery of our current contracts at the same time as building and promoting the game-changing SONAR CMS solution.

My highlights were:

A Growing Team

From 10 to 13 members over the year. We’ve grown as a result of winning new work and there is a strong pipeline for 2024 and 2025.

The Launch of SONAR

The SONAR Data Portal is live and already leading to improved outcomes. The SONAR Custody Portal will launch in Police Custody suites in early 2024. The vision of a joined-up health information system across Criminal Justice is moving closer to reality.

Innovative Delivery

We are building SONAR at the same time as delivering high quality services under the JWPM banner. We greatly value our successful partnership with health and justice teams in the East of England. I am proud that we have consistently scored 90 per cent for customer satisfaction, well above the industry average. Our teams are solving problems quickly and without jargon for our customers – I am very grateful to them.

Spreading the Message

We met many members of the health and justice community at national events including:

• The 10th annual Health and Justice Summit in Belfast.

• The Labour Party conference in Liverpool.

• The Thriving Survivors conference on restorative justice in Glasgow; and

• The National Police Chief Council / Association of Police and Crime Commissioners annual conference in Westminster.

We also launched this blog! And are very grateful for your interest.

Advocacy

We have met with the NPCC, the Home Affairs Select Committee and with Police and Crime Commissioners to discuss the benefits of switching the commissioning of police custody healthcare from police forces to the NHS – replacing fragmentation with a joined-up system. The increase in deaths in police custody this year – from 13 to 23 -reminded us why this is important.

We joined TechUK and met with the UK Association of Forensic Nurses.

There is so much to come in 2024: not least the implementation of SONAR for Police Custody and Courts.  The design and build of the SONAR Prison Portal and our Post-Release and Primary Care portals.

Very best wishes for 2024 from the whole SONAR team.

John White

Founder & CEO

Update: Initial Feedback on the SONAR Data Portal Go-Live

As our earlier blog said, the SONAR Data Portal went live in a number of secure custodial sites last month – a very exciting moment for us. I’m very grateful indeed for the team’s hard work. We now have one month of feedback on the SONAR Data Portal in action.

There are two key findings:

Outcomes are Improving

Key healthcare metrics show marked positive change over the last month. The SONAR Data Portal’s data analysis shows that trends are forecast to continue to improve.

These metrics include:

• Patients in the secure custodial setting with an NHS number.

• Patients waiting for a reception screening.

• Patients receiving Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C screening.

• Patients receiving HIV screening.

  
  

This is key evidence as it demonstrates having improved access to healthcare data enables managers to identify key priorities and act on them. That has always been a core argument for the new approach embodied in the SONAR Data Portal.

Visualisation of Data makes a Difference

The SONAR Data Portal translates healthcare data into visualisations, which are much easier for users to assess and rectify.   Again, this helps managers, clinicians and admin staff understand performance and see where improvement is required.

What we have started is only the beginning, when it comes to data analysis, the quality of that data and how we utilise that data further in data forecasting for the healthcare provider and Commissioner is our end objective. 

Accurate collection of healthcare data, and the secure, yet easily accessible presentation of it, may not be the most glamorous element of healthcare in Criminal Justice, yet improving data quality within Prison Healthcare is paramount and plays an integral role in ensuring the well-being of patients and the efficacy of commissioned healthcare services.

I look forward to updating you further in the New Year on the implementation and roll out of the SONAR Data Portal. 

SONAR – World AIDS Day, 1 December 2023

The discovery of new and better treatment for HIV / AIDS is one of the great health service successes of the last forty years. Clinicians and scientists have discovered how to diagnose the disease quickly and to treat it with new drug therapies (diagnosis of patients as HIV positive can be carried out by a simple test costing £20, with 100 per cent reliability).

As a result, the number of new HIV diagnoses among men has fallen from 4,155 in 2013 to 2,430 in 2022. At the same time, the number of people who are able to live with the disease has risen. The most recent survey showed that an estimated 105,200 people were estimated to be living with HIV infection in the UK in 2019, 94 per cent of which were diagnosed.

There is more to do: the rates of transmissions among heterosexual men and among women have not fallen as fast as those for gay men, for example. Leading AIDS charities are campaigning for routine tests for patients attending A&E across the country, following a successful pilot in London, Manchester, Brighton and Blackpool.

The overall goal, as set out by government, is to end new transmissions of HIV in England by 2030. Providers of health information systems in prisons and other settings, such as SONAR, can help to achieve it.

The cohort of users that SONAR supports is at high risk of contracting the virus. Drug users are heavily over-represented in prisons. Nearly 30,000 adults received treatment for drug problems in prisons in 2020-21.

In 2018, the Health Select Committee received evidence that prevalence of HIV and hepatitis C was higher among male prisoners than in the whole population, and substantially higher among female prisoners.

SONAR’s specialized interface for health staff aims to make it easy for health professionals to input data on, for example, HIV testing and treatment. Because of the ability to connect to health data in other settings, and in the NHS, prison staff will have full knowledge of prisoners’ medical history and medication needs.

It will prevent examples where individuals have suffered harm due to failure act on a person’s medical status, as in the case of Thoko Shiri who died as a prisoner at HMP Chelmsford having failed to receive HIV medication. Through the SONAR Release Portal, it will ensure that health authorities are aware of an individual’s full medical history post-release.

SONAR aims to provide the right information at the right time. In the case of HIV / AIDS, it will contribute to an historic and ongoing improvement in people’s lives through better healthcare.

References:

• HIV diagnoses: New HIV diagnoses, AIDS, deaths and people in care in England data tables, UK Health Security Agency, October 2023

• People living with HIV: House of Commons library, July 2023

• Department of Health AIDS action plan (December 2021) and update (June 2023).

• People receiving drug treatment in prison: Alcohol and drug treatment in secure settings 2020-21, Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, 27 January 2022

• Evidence to Health Select Committee: Revolving Doors Agency, 2019

• Case of Thoko Shiri, Leigh Day solicitors, June 2022