Radical reimagination of preventative healthcare at Rewired
It felt right to be with friends and colleagues from across health tech and the NHS this week at Digital Health Rewired in Birmingham on Tuesday. Despite considerable change ahead, people were remarkably upbeat and keen to ensure that tech advances play key roles in the challenges faced by the NHS.
Some highpoints for me?
Rachel Hope reminded us that prevention has been discussed since the inception of the NHS in 1948 however we now have new tools that we can use to support prevention that were not previously available. She spoke compellingly about the work underway within digital prevention and that we should recognise that something quite remarkable is happening in this country in terms of a move to personalised, preventative and digitally enabled care through screening, vaccination booking, digital health checks, and the modelling of the hospital admissions avoided and lives saved were significant.
This was great to hear and to have practical examples - from digital health checks to screening notifications - of work underway to reach more people with tech enabled preventative care which is at the heart of the three shifts we seek across the NHS.
Hearing from Umang Patel from Microsoft and also a paediatrician about how generative AI can simplify patient information to a reading age of 9, which is what we need to ensure everyone is on board. And how it can help kids learn about their health in an engaging way such as Winnie the Pooh and his inhaler, that can be changed to different heroes and languages. He also asked, is the NHS the best school for AI?
Joe Harrison on form with great stats about NHS App uptake - more users in the UK than Netflix, the NHS App is now the most used patient app in the world getting over 50 million logins a month (which is a doubling in the past year) So far in 24/25 there have been 39m repeat prescriptions, 2.5m test results appts avoided, 7 million fewer letters sent, 860,000 opd dnas avoided, 82% of acutes are linked, and aim to double again in the next year and hope to exceed 100m logins a month. He added there are now no excuses not to be linked with the NHS App if you are a supplier and announced that Epic integration will be in place later in the year.
Chief Technology Officer Sonia Patel FBCS spoke about the Analogue to Digital shift - with a plea to join the conversation at #letstalkarchitecture
Mike Bracken was great value with a plea for government to get militant about interoperability and cantered across the world demonstrating how a GDS style approach and open source tech is making a difference in many countries including cracking examples of low income countries leapfrogging.
Dr Charlotte Refsum talked about entirely different models of outpatient care made possible by a citizen centric health record.
It was fantastic to hear the push, close to my own heart, to support the top 1% most at risk of emergency hospital admission with remote monitoring, given the clear evidence of impact when this has been applied to at risk populations. I think this would be gamechanging for both individuals and the NHS and is the logical next step from our virtual ward platform in place.
On the topic of “left shift” Markus Bolton from Graphnet lobbied for everyone having an end of life digital record (and no ambulance should be despatched till this has been reviewed), and a doubling in usage of SCRs by putting pop health front and centre, great ideas that it would be terrific to put into practice across the NHS.
We heard from William Monaghan and Hayley Grafton from the Midlands about the collaborative work they are involved in which began with a powerful vision -
What if staff could work freely and mobile across the east Midlands patch?
If you could give a new resident doctor a phone and login on arrival that would work everywhere across their rotation?
If patients could get great care wherever they are and only tell their story once?
It sounded like fantastic collaborative work, driving change when it wasn't in the best interests of patients and the result will be a much better system for all. Shout outs were given for UK startup, formerly on the NIA Nervecentre Software in terms of responsiveness and flexibility.
Wonderful to catch up with people I’ve had the pleasure of working with over the years - including many I still do - a chance to connect around a common cause when times are tough.
Clinician | Digital Health Strategy | NHS Transformation | Urgent & Emergency Care | Policy and Pricing | Virtual Care
6moGreat read thanks