Technology
Scaling wearables to deliver the 10-Year Health Plan
The 10-Year Health Plan calls for three important shifts in the way health and care is delivered. Technology enabled care, wearables and remote devices will need to become an integral part of the strategy. Steve Wightman offers an insight into the challenges and opportunities ahead.
The government’s commitment to the three big shifts in health and care – from analogue to digital, hospital to community and sickness to prevention – are rarely out of the news headlines. It is a common mantra that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, and his minsters cite in almost all of their speeches and interviews. It is also the backbone of the NHS 10-Year Health Plan, which was recently published. In the case of moving healthcare upstream to deliver more in primary care and the community and providing more predictive-led services, we have a long way to go. Not only does it require investment and reform in the infrastructure of these different care settings so they have the capacity to take on more care, but there also needs to be more effective commissioning models, greater collaborative working between health and care professionals, and a significant change in public perception of where and how they will be treated. This is just a few of the obstacles that need to be overcome. Perhaps the most straightforward shift is
from analogue to digital, primarily because the NHS isn’t starting from ground zero – there are plenty of fantastic examples of digitisation across the health service. Advanced technology is already available, not least in the case of remote monitoring, wearables and technology enabled care (TEC). We’ve seen it become much more
mainstream since the COVID-19 pandemic, and as initiatives such as virtual wards were implemented nationally. By using these devices,
providers have been able to free up staff time without impacting on patient outcomes, enable earlier interventions and empower patients to take more of an active role in their health. North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT)
is a great example. The team, led by Umesh Gadhvi (the Chief Digital Information Officer), implemented a care platform that integrates with remote technology to address the growing demand for specialised respiratory care and recruitment challenges with high reliance on locum staff across the hospital, and specifically designed processes that enable joined-up working between the acute and community
This ‘Help-at-Home’ initiative enabled individuals to return home and receive round the clock monitoring and support, while also feeling more in control of their health. It has also saved the NHS an estimated 630 bed days.
teams – ensuring implementation was modelled around the people and not the technology.
Proven digitisation This first-of-type model involved using information from its electronic patient record (EPR) system and advanced digital dashboards to make quick assessments of a patient’s eligibility for the virtual ward and the availability of community services to be safely discharged. Once at home, patients had their observations
taken using a remote monitoring system that provided audio and visual feedback to clinicians and the data was integrated with the EPR. The award-winning approach has enabled the Trust to reduce the end-to-end information transfer time to just 15 minutes, creating a more seamless transition from hospital to home care. Readmission rates for patients have dropped by 75% and 1,250 acute bed days have been saved – helping the Trust be on track to deliver £6.8 million on released bed capacity. Patients have also found it to be an extremely
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