For my condition, treatment can happen two ways: in a hospital unit several times a week, or at home. When I was offered home, it was equal parts freedom and terror — you're running the whole thing yourself, no nurse in the room. I said yes anyway. Most people, completely understandably, don't.
That "most people don't" stuck with me. Because home isn't the compromise option — it's cheaper for the NHS and better for patients, and both of those are in the published evidence, not my opinion. So I went and found the numbers, because a real cost case is worth more than a good story.
The numbers
The per-patient saving — about £9,000 to £12,000 a year — is from Roberts et al. (2022), the most rigorous recent UK cost analysis. The policy target and the system-wide saving come from the NHS's own Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme (2022): it recommends a minimum of 20% of patients treated at home, the national rate sits around 16%, and closing that gap would save tens of millions a year.
One honest caveat. You'll see bigger figures quoted — £15k to £20k a year. Those are real, but they apply to a different home modality, or to older tariff models. For a clean like-for-like comparison, £9–12k is the number I'd defend.
The gap isn't money, and it isn't safety
Here's the part that matters, and it's the part I felt myself. Treating at home is already cheaper, and outcomes are at least as good — better blood pressure control, fewer hospital stays, better quality of life in the NICE evidence. So the barrier to more people doing it isn't cost, and it isn't safety.
It's confidence.
Running the whole thing yourself, several times a week, with no nurse in the room — that is genuinely daunting, and I remember exactly how daunting. People stay in the unit because home feels unsupported, not because it's worse.
The opportunity, in one line
If the blocker is confidence and support rather than cost or outcomes, then better software — something that tracks the treatment, watches the trends, and answers questions from your own data — is exactly the kind of infrastructure that moves the number. That's what I'm building.
Why I'm writing this down
This is the most concrete part of the whole project. Not "here's a nice app" — "here's a measurable saving, an NHS target the country is missing, and a tool aimed at the actual blocker: the feeling I had on day one."
If you work on this from the other side — a commissioner, a research group, a founder, a clinical team — that's the conversation I want to have. Turning lived experience and data into systems people can actually use is also what I do for a living. Get in touch if it's useful.