ATiC and TriTech complete national evaluation of Community HealthPathways for NHS Wales
The University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s Assistive Technologies Innovation Centre (ATiC) and Hywel Dda University Health Board’s TriTech Institute have completed an independent, all-Wales evaluation of Community HealthPathways (CHP), a secure, online platform that provides clinically approved guidance and decision-support tools for healthcare professionals.
The Community HealthPathways (CHP) platform is a digital tool designed to support healthcare professionals (HCPs) in primary care settings by facilitating adherence to standardised, evidence-based, and locally adapted clinical pathways. These pathways are co-developed by HCPs within their respective regions to ensure relevance and applicability. International implementation of the CHP platform, notably in countries such as New Zealand and Australia, has demonstrated improvements in the quality of clinical referrals and the overall delivery of healthcare services.
The six-month evaluation (February–August 2025), commissioned by NHS Wales Performance and Improvement, examined the impact of CHP on patients, healthcare professionals, and the NHS in Wales. It focused on five key areas: uptake across Wales, impact on healthcare professionals, usability and user experience, influence on patient referrals, and the overall value of the system.
Combining clinical insight with human-centred design, TriTech led the national mixed-methods evaluation, while ATiC developed bilingual (Welsh/English) surveys, conducted usability testing, and analysed user experience. Using industry benchmarks and detailed feedback, the team produced clear, design-led recommendations to support effective rollout and adoption across Wales.
Dr Fatma Layas, Innovation Fellow at ATiC, said: “ATiC’s role was to evaluate the usability and UX of the CHP, and to bring the user voice into a clinically led, all-Wales evaluation. By pairing usability testing with UX and targeted feedback from healthcare professionals, we shaped focused recommendations on clarity, wayfinding and workflow fit to support consistent, high-quality care. Strong usability and user experience are what turn a clinically credible platform into a tool that healthcare professionals can confidently adopt and integrate into their daily practice.”
Dr Layas added: “This project showcases a partnership model that blends human-centred design, clinical science, and robust evaluative research to support safer, better, and streamlined care.”
Dr Ceri Phelps, Health Psychologist at UWTSD, said: “This project explored the impact of the Community HealthPathways platform on primary care professionals’ referral behaviours across a range of conditions. As a health psychologist I was interested in exploring the mechanisms through which the platform may have supported behaviour change in the form of increasing perceived knowledge, confidence and competence around improving the quality of referrals to secondary care.”
Professor Chris Hopkins, Consultant Clinical Scientist and Head of Innovation at the TriTech Institute in Hywel Dda University Health Board, said: “This evaluative research provides a robust evidence base, ensuring that health services in Wales are informed and guided by rigorous, methodologically sound findings.
“In response to the prevailing challenges confronting the healthcare system across Wales and the wider United Kingdom, it is imperative to demonstrate clear value from investment in health services. The concept of value encompasses multiple dimensions, including improvements in patient outcomes, enhancements in patient experience, the strategic transition from treatment to prevention, and financial sustainability. Achieving these objectives necessitates the generation and utilisation of robust data and evidence to inform intelligence-driven decision making.
“Central to this endeavour are the partnerships TriTech has established with our academic institutions, which play a critical role in supporting our work and this agenda. These collaborations provide the methodological rigour and evaluative frameworks required to guide commissioners, healthcare professionals, and communities across Wales toward evidence-based, value-oriented healthcare delivery.”
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