The Swedish company Livi has created an online app that provides access to a GP via smartphone or tablet for consultations and prescriptions. Patients can book an appointment to see their registered GP via video link. Livi's service is available in the UK in certain areas in collaboration with NHS GP surgeries. The Covid-19 pandemic boosted the use of the company's services. The company plans to expand across the UK in association with GP practices and integrated care systems (ICS).
Last updated: August 2024
Strategy
Livi is a subsidiary of the Swedish healthcare group KRY. LIVI/KRY is managed by the Swedish company Webbhälsa AB (556967-0820).
The company's strategy is to introduce digital GP services around Europe. By 2024, Livi was one of the leading companies providing digital care and healthtech in Europe, in Sweden and Norway as Kry, and in France and the UK as Livi. Its technology enables the public to access a consultation with their registered GP through their mobile phone by simply downloading the app. The company's approach was boosted by the Covid pandemic as digital access to healthcare suddenly became the norm, rather than exception, and patients became more accepting. Although in the UK there was a backlash to this after lockdown had finished.
In a March 2024 interview Kalle Conneryd Lundgren, chief operating officer at Livi, noted that "in the future, all healthcare journeys, for every patient, will have digital components and physical components. Digital when needed and physical when necessary. A combined digital-physical healthcare model is the solution to the challenges of healthcare systems and how they can improve efficiency and lower costs of care." Lundgren noted that the company has about 450 clinicians working for it in the UK, across approximately 1,500 GP practices.
Lundgren added that in 2024 Livi will start offering in the UK a service that it is already offering in France and Sweden – a complete package, a ‘virtual practice partner’. Through this, Livi "can support communication with patients regardless of the EMR system that the partner organisation sits in; insights and reporting; digital consultation; consultation reminders; remote patient monitoring and patient questionnaires; and a tailored patient app for NHS partners. It will be fully in control of the NHS partner organisation, fully in their service."
Livi would like to be "the largest primary care provider in Europe" in ten years time according to Lundgren, doubling its number of clinicians to 10,000.
The issue in the UK for the company, however, is that it is difficult to partner at scale so most partnerships, at the moment, according to Lundgren "tend to be sub-scale; you’ll have a lot of small partnerships rather than one major overarching one." The company would like "conversations with the NHS about how we could help with this at a larger scale, that would make a difference to how fast we can increase scale and capacity within the UK system."
In June 2024, LIVI appointed Tom Davis as UK medical director. He will be responsible for shaping the company strategy and building its clinical operations. This will include introducing new care pathways to tackle chronic diseases and prevention, enhancing digital clinical care quality through innovation, along with expanding services into NHS England.
In the UK, the company's first partnership was with the NICS GP practitioners, a large GP Federation based in North West Surrey. In August 2019, LIVI revealed plans to partner with GP federations in Birmingham, Shropshire, Northamptonshire and parts of the south east to provide services to 1.85 million patients as a result of a series of deals signed with NHS commissioners.
In January 2019, Juliet Bauer joined LIVI direct from NHS England where she was the first chief digital officer and had responsibility for digital projects focused on patients, including the NHS app, NHS 111 online, the NHS app library, and widening digital patient participation.
In March 2020, LIVI launched a free web-based platform to enable doctors to interact with patients self-isolating at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said that the software, LIVI Connect, allows any healthcare professional to hold video consultations with their patients.
It is available in 10 languages – English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and Polish – and LIVI’s parent company KRY has plans to roll out the platform worldwide.
In October 2020, Livi acquired practice communication service MJog. The acquisition will mean Livi can support practices with a range of new benefits such as integrated video technology for in-practice appointments and a number of triage and patient management tools.
In April 2020, Boots UK and LIVI announced a new long-term partnership to trial how patients could remotely access a Boots pharmacist via the LIVI app, to get general health advice and to have a remote conversation about their prescription medications. The partnership also includes a LIVI video GP service in store, as well as a range of diagnostic tools, such as blood pressure monitoring. A pilot of this service has taken place in several Boots stores and will now expand.
Financials
Since LIVI/KRY was founded it has undertaken six rounds of financing , according to Crunchbase, resulting in a total of Euro494.1 million Index Ventures invested 53 million euros which LIVI/KRY used for continuing building and further expanding geographically as well as to expand its medical offering. There's also been investments from Creandum and Project A, with the latest round of investment in April 2021 from CPP Investments and Fidelity Management and Research for Euro262 million.
Contracts
In October 2018 Livi's app was launched in the UK under a contract with 40 GP surgeries in North West Surrey, covering 360,000 patients. Patients will be able to see their own GPs via the system and Livi's contracted doctors.
At the same time the app was launched for use by private patients across the UK. Private consultations via the app have a fee of around £49 per consultation, but with the first one for free.
In August 2019, Livi reported plans to partner with GP federations in Birmingham, Shropshire, Northamptonshire and parts of the south east to provide services to 1.85 million patients. Patients sign up to Livi through their practice so they can access video GP consultations, referrals and prescriptions through an app.
The partnerships include with Birmingham’s Our Health Partnership, Northampton General Practice Alliance and Shropshire’s Alliance for Better Care, and with several more practices in Surrey.
In March 2020, Livi was awarded a place on a contract for the provision of video consultation services for GP surgeries. Livi is one of 11 companies that were awarded a place on this contract, which was an emergency 48 hour contract tender issued by NHS England on 23 March. The winners were informed on 25 March and will work with surgeries to reduce the need for face-to-face consultations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Livi has developed LIVI Connect, a free and secure web-based platform that allows any healthcare professional to hold video consultations with their patients.
Livi is using its MJog patient messaging platform to support the rollout of vaccines via the NHS, to encourage uptake and counter anti-vaxxer misinformation on social media.
In February 2021, Livi partnered with BMI Healthcare (now Circle), the UK’s largest private health chain with more than 50 hospitals across the country serving millions of patients. The main aim of the alliance is to connect Livi’s GP consultation services with the private healthcare company’s network of consultants, making it easier for specialist referrals to be organised remotely.
Concerns
As with all these digital services that involve GPs, there are questions over what impact they have on GPs working for the NHS. Companies, such as Livi recruit GPs for private work, thus reducing their availability for NHS work.
Reviews on the NHS website from August 2020 to December 2020 were almost all negative and highlighted problems with long waits, cancelled appointments, and technical matters. Reviewers noted repeatedly cancelled appointments due to a lack of GPs and suggested that whatever Livi promised, the company would also suffer from the shortage of GPs experienced by a conventional surgery. There were also problems with verifying ID and prescriptions being issued.
In January 2019, it was revealed that the Livi app and many other digital services developed by private companies are not compatible with the NHS app. This NHS app is designed to be a digital “front door” for all NHS patients and is where all apps involved in GP consultations will be located.
