Meet the innovator: Jo Barosa, Qbtech

Jo Barosa is Account Director at Qbtech UK. Qbtech is a market leading provider of innovative objective tests for assessing and treating ADHD, changing the landscape of ADHD care. Driven by its mission to improve the lives of people with ADHD, Qbtech supports by providing digital and clinical solutions to improve clinical decision making, service efficiency and patient experience.

A multi award winning company, whose product (QbTest) received recent NICE recommendation, Qbtech serves both the NHS and private practice.

The Health Innovation Network supported the spread of the QbTest through the Focus ADHD national programme, which to date has benefitted more than 77,000 children and young people.

Tell us about the innovation. The what and the why?

QbTest is a NICE recommended, FDA cleared, and CE marked objective testing system to provide objective data that measure the core symptoms of ADHD, a core requirement of diagnostic criteria in both DSMV and ICD11. Patient results are compared with an age and gender matched normative database, enabling the clinician to understand the clinical significance of symptomology, improving clinical decision making.

QbTest helps to compensate for inter-rater bias that often confuses the clinical picture, leading to diagnostic delay and associated clinical inefficiency. Minimising delay is important to the patient and their families, as ADHD impairment can cause distress, affect educational attainment, social functioning and have a negative impact on quality of life.

Qbtech has a rigorous training programme and provide clinical supervision in the form of support calls with a dedicated Clinical Advisor team to ensure the highest standards of implementation and delivery.

Which health innovation networks have you been supported by?

As part of the National Programme, Focus ADHD, an NHS England sponsored initiative, Qbtech has collaborated with all 15 of the national Health Innovation Networks. The precursor to this was the Real-World Demonstrator project, led by the East Midlands Health Innovation team that paved the way to achieving National Programme status.

Working side by side, bringing in additional stakeholders, (Institute of Mental Health, The ADHD Foundation, Patient and Public representatives, NIHR, Mindtech, Nottingham University, KSS audit team, NHS England) the aim was to support NHS mental health trusts and community paediatric services to improve ADHD assessments for children and young people nationally, by improving clinical robustness by implementing objective testing and data (QbTest).

Based on the collaboration with Health Innovation Network and the results of the national programme, Qbtech are also working across Europe and the USA, providing vital data points and research, improving the profile of UK ADHD care.

What’s been the toughest obstacle to date?

In the early days, finding the right people to collaborate with was a challenge. As with all innovations, nobody wants to be first to adopt and so finding clinical partners/leaders that were as passionate about innovating the traditional approach to ADHD care took some time. As a company, we made the decision to have research at its core, which gave clinicians and Trust staff confidence to align with us, fuelled by similar goals of what was needed to revolutionise care. Over 20 years on, now, nobody wants to be last to implement QbTest and we are in the enviable position of being in nearly 80% of NHS Trusts and have significant uptake in the private practice, some of which who are large scale providers.

What are your hopes for the future?

At Qbtech, we are never content with our current offer and continually strive to improve and look for new and innovative ways of supporting patients, clinicians and services. In the field of ADHD, there is still so much work to be done. With the current influx of patients increasing significantly year on year, comprising NHS resources, we are working hard to develop new solutions. The same models of care cannot be applied to achieve a different outcome, so new models, resources and solutions need to be developed and supplied to support the whole health ecology. If we do not all achieve this, patients and their families will suffer as a result. Every patient deserves timely diagnosis and intervention, and this drives the Qbtech team every day.

Working with our in-house medical, research and development team, we are currently developing new products to improve the health ecology as a whole benefitting both patients and services in and outside of the clinic.

What’s the best part of your job?

I have the privilege of hearing about the direct impact QbTest can have on patients, clinicians and services. There is nothing better than hearing how QbTest has made a positive impact and knowing both myself, my team and our company has made a difference. Meeting patients and listening to how it has helped them to understand their own condition, or someone in their family, is just so heartwarming for me personally and is something I am immensely proud of.

I consider myself so lucky to have such diversity to my role, from care pathway consultation, business development, lecturing on service efficiency and ADHD and consultation on new ideas for development. Despite 13 years in the role, I am still so passionate about all things ADHD, and this drives me to challenge the status quo of ADHD care to improve, not only those who have a diagnosis, but those who are hidden and marginalised as a result of slipping through the net.

What are your three pieces of advice for budding innovators?

1. Be brave, be patient, listen and have conviction in your product and tenacity for the long game!

2. Invest in your data/research/product development/personal knowledge and development, to give your clients confidence to work with you and invest in your product.

3. Understand the power of collaboration. Collaborating with the Health Innovation Network both regionally and nationally has been a game changer, as has our strong relationship with the ADHD Foundation.