Telehealth on display at NATO. (AP Photo/Regina Garcia Cano) Baroness Martha Lane Fox proposed earlier today that the National Health Service should make greater use of digital services, with an aim to get 10% of patients digital by 2017. Her recommendations resulted from a review of internet services, from relatively rudimentary services such as booking appointments and ordering prescriptions to receiving consultations online. It's a vision that digital health pioneer Ali Parsa is fully on board with. Parsa, the founder of telehealth platform Babylon, believes that technology is fundamental if the challenges facing healthcare are to be overcome. "Martha couldn’t be more right in urging the NHS to adopt technology. As she mentions, one of the founding principles was to ensure that everyone has equal access to the best medical services available. Britain has the means, the know-how and the capability of making this happen, making our healthcare system the most accessible and connected in the world," he told me earlier today. Overcoming the access gap One of the challenges for digital healthcare to overcome is that of access, with the Royal College of General Practitioners urging caution before adopting technologies that were not available to all, whether that was through a lack of access or a lack of skills to take advantage of new approaches. A recent study from researchers at the University of Missouri highlights the considerable upside available. The study analyzed the Tiger Place community, which utilized sensor technology and onsite care coordination to monitor and maintain the health of residents. The study found that residents would typically stay for longer than their peers in other senior housing facilities. This matters because it reflects the strong health of the resident, which therefore allows them to remain living independently for longer rather than moving over to a hospital or more advanced care facility. Cost effective changes The study revealed that even with the cost of installing the sensor technology, the scheme generated savings of around $30,000 per person, with savings for those in Medicaid funded homes being around $87,000 per person. Similar savings emerged in a telehealth trial conducted at Airedale NHS Trust. When they installed a telehealth system in an elderly care home it resulted in a 35% fall in emergency admissions and a 53% fall in visits to A&E. It's a level of saving that Babylon's Ali Parsa has seen in his own work with the NHS. "An NHS practice we partnered with earlier this year has already dramatically reduced waiting times by offering our service to their patients. Average waiting times have been reduced by a third, with patients now waiting just two weeks instead of three to see a GP. 10% of their patients are already using babylon – imagine what the waiting times will be when 50%, or 100% of NHS patients are 'online,’” he says. Making the journey into practice Of course, not all valuable technologies make it into practice, and a recent study explored some of the reasons why this might be so. The analysis found that venture backers were typically only interested in the financial return they would receive on their investment, with the health benefits a distant second place in their priorities. “It’s worrisome,” the authors say, “because there are lots of missed opportunities to develop innovations that could help us, for example, to better manage chronic disease or better meet the needs of an ageing population. But it is difficult to convince capital investors to invest in these areas.” It suggests that a different approach is needed, both to how healthcare technology is backed, and even some of the criteria by which investments are chosen. The recently published Global Innovation Index highlights the innovative value inherent in having the state support socially worthwhile innovations, and that certainly seems to be happening in the U.K., with projects such as the NHS Test Bed designed to support and incubate socially valuable technologies within the health service. Predicting the success of innovations is infamously uncertain, but it is nonetheless a challenge that the NHS appears to be facing head-on. "These bold challenges to the system to ensure that every person in the U.K. benefits are very welcome," Tim Kelsey, NHS England national director for patients and information said upon the release of the recommendations. Time will tell how successful they will be.
The NHS should make a greater effort to use digital services , with a target of getting 10 % of staff digital by 2017 , according to Professor Martha Lane Fox . However in order for digital healthcare to be adopted , the industry must meet certain challenges , which include closing the access gap to technology by making it more accessible , and improving training so that people can take full advantage of the technology .