TECHNOLOGY
Embracing digital health to improve outcomes
A digital health All-Party Parliamentary Group aims to highlight the benefits that digital technologies can have when successfully implemented. Tackling fears around the use of patient data will be vital, but increased adoption of technology could ultimately empower patients and improve health outcomes. Interview by Louise Frampton.
Digital health technologies are increasingly being implemented to support healthcare delivery, identify unmet needs, measure outcomes and shape services. As the Secretary of State, Matt Hancock, commented at the start of 2020: “Better technology is vital to have, and embracing it is the only way to make the NHS sustainable over the long term.” However, what he could not have predicted, when he issued this proclamation, was just how quickly digital health would advance within the NHS in a very short space of time. As the UK has battled with coronavirus, the adoption of digital technologies has accelerated at a previously unimaginable pace – from telehealth and remote monitoring, to technology to help identify new groups of people who may be at high risk from COVID-19. Many stories have emerged from Trusts of rapid digital technology adoption, in some instances advancing in four months what would normally take four years.1 With 12,900 employees, digital health is UK health tech’s largest sub-sector employer, turning over £1.7bn, with 63% of businesses formed in the last 10 years.2
These technologies encompass a wide variety of tools, all underpinned by how data is collected, aggregated, analysed and acted upon. A key need is the availability of this data to enable improved outcomes. With this in mind, a Digital Health All-
Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) has been constituted to highlight the benefits that successful use of data and digital health technologies can bring to the NHS, to patients and to the UK economy. The APPG’s secretariat services will be provided by the Association of British Health Tech Industries (ABHI), and the group will bring together parliamentarians and senior health and technology leaders to progress
APRIL 2021
the digital agenda – focusing on the issues of trust, consent and appropriate regulation. The Digital Health APPG is being chaired
by Dean Russell, Member of Parliament for Watford, who has worked in the digital space for the past 20 years. During this time, he has been the vice chair of a patient reference panel, for NHS Health Space, which looked at patients’ access to health records online, as well as working on a variety of projects focused on patient experience and digital communications. In 2010, he undertook a review of every NHS website in England and Wales, for the Department of Health, and found that “around £87-121 million was being wasted on websites that people didn’t know existed”.
While there have been some high-profile challenges and criticism of national ‘top- down’ IT strategies, in the past, attitudes are now changing, and the digital landscape has
moved on; technology permeates every aspect of our lives and there is an expectation that the NHS will be a part of this transformation. “Historically, when people have talked about health and technology, it has been viewed through the lens of big IT infrastructure – the billions of pounds spent on IT projects that didn’t work as well as they should have. But, in many ways, digital health has significantly transformed,” Dean commented. He pointed out that the use of devices, such as Apple watches and health apps, has become a part of everyday life – there is much more understanding from the patient’s view and the mindset has dramatically changed. The technology has the potential to be prescribed to prevent health issues, as well as manage them. “We often think that people should be swallowing a tablet, when they could actually be using one instead,” Dean quipped. He
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