In the wake of England’s 10-Year Health Plan, healthcare is undergoing a seismic shift. From analogue to digital, from hospital to home, and from sickness response to preventative care—the system is being re-engineered to meet the demands of the future.

But delivering on these ambitions isn’t simply a matter of moving consultations online. Truly transforming care means redesigning the entire clinical pathway—how we assess, diagnose, treat, and follow up with patients—so it works outside of traditional settings and better reflects the real world patients live in.

The Pressure for Change

Healthcare inequality is a known and persistent challenge. While the push toward digital services promises greater efficiency, we must ensure it doesn’t unintentionally widen the gap for those with limited access to technology or who can’t easily attend in-person clinics.

Remote clinical pathways—designed to function end-to-end from a patient’s home—have the potential to do more than digitise care; they can democratise it. When designed with intention, they remove logistical and systemic barriers, reduce burden on clinicians, and meet patients where they are, both literally and figuratively.

What It Means to Deliver a Remote Clinical Pathway

At Hurdle, we see remote pathways not as a product, but as a framework. One that integrates data collection, triage, decision-making, and even prescribing into a cohesive process that clinicians and patients alike can trust.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Comprehensive, real-world data collection

Remote doesn’t mean limited. Pathways incorporate data from home blood tests, wearables, third-party medical records, and patient-reported outcomes. This creates a fuller picture of health than can be captured in a single clinic visit.

Clinical-grade decision support

Pathways are built in line with national guidelines (e.g. NICE), and include decision points that automatically triage or recommend action based on the data collected. This allows for scale—without sacrificing safety or clinical governance.

Designed with clinicians, not just for them

Local teams are often overwhelmed when remote data starts flooding into their systems without structure. Hurdle’s approach includes clinician input at the outset to ensure each potential outcome is anticipated and appropriately handled.

Patient-centric by design

With built-in engagement tools, pathways actively support patients to complete required steps. And where full data capture isn’t possible, pathways adapt—because that’s what happens in real life. People miss steps, lose kits, have questions. The pathway continues regardless.

Going Beyond the Obvious: Real-World Pathways in Action

One of the most established remote models is the CVD Risk Assessment Pathway, designed to help identify and manage cardiovascular disease risk in patients who may otherwise not engage with traditional clinic-based care. The pathway leverages the QRisk3 score and is aligned with NICE’s 2023 guidelines, enabling remote provision of blood pressure monitors and test kits, with follow-up delivered digitally or in-person as appropriate.

But that’s just one part of the picture.

A new generation of remote clinical pathways is now emerging to support a wider range of health conditions, including:

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Pathways
Early CKD detection can be life-changing. This CKD pathway remotely guides patients through urine ACR testing, blood pressure checks, and renal function panels, using stratified follow-up timelines based on risk—ranging from 30 to 90 days.

Obesity and Hypertension Management
Combining coaching, medication oversight (including GLP-1s), and lifestyle interventions, this pathway integrates patient-reported metrics with wearables and lab tests to support sustained weight and blood pressure management.

Diabetes (Type 1 & Type 2) Monitoring
Managing diabetes remotely means more than sending out HbA1c kits. The approach includes education, medication review, biometric data, and even coeliac screening for Type 1 diabetics—all coordinated around each patient’s needs and lifestyle.

Autoimmune Conditions (RA, SLE, IBD)
These patients often face delays in diagnosis and fragmented care. By collecting molecular biomarkers (like ANA and anti-CCP) alongside patient-reported symptoms, temperature data, and clinical guidelines, it ensures low-acuity yet complex cases are still effectively managed at home.

Cancer Screening
Improving access to early screening for prostate, cervical, ovarian, and bowel cancers is essential. Hurdle enables this through remote sample collection for PSA, HPV, CA-125, and FIT tests—streamlining detection and ensuring follow-up pathways are in place.

Infectious Disease Testing
Sexually transmitted infections and hepatitis are often underdiagnosed due to stigma or logistical barriers. The remote infectious disease pathway provides safe, confidential access to testing for HIV, syphilis, chlamydia, and hepatitis B/C, with built-in clinical follow-up when needed.

Making the System Work for Everyone

Too often, technology in healthcare is designed with ideal scenarios in mind. But health systems are complex. People’s lives are even more so.

Remote pathways must be flexible enough to handle edge cases, and robust enough to deliver clinical certainty. That’s the only way they will earn the trust of patients, clinicians, and system leaders alike.