EBME
accessed at:
https://tinyurl.com/5e7a8uxd Patient-Enablement Engineers would work exclusively in the space between acute care and social care with their clinical colleagues. They would not only require the full remit of engineering qualifications and skills but in-depth clinical and social care knowledge as well as management and customer service experience. “There could be a challenge here – how do we get people into the home environment and support them?” He pointed out that with home dialysis, for example, there will be an increase in water bills. “Who is paying for the extra water to run this? We have some elderly patients who need a machine which talks to the internet and sends results to the hospital, but they don’t have Wi-Fi and they can’t afford it, so who is going to pay for it? Who is setting this up? Potentially, there are a lot of challenges out there,” commented Iain Threlkeld. One of the delegates responded: “We have a
virtual ward, but the team are based on site. One of the issues that arises, when we send babies home on oxygen, for example, is that it’s often provided by a third-party provider via the GP, which we have no control over,” he explained. Further issues have been identified during
telecare trials: “The GP may want to monitor the patient’s blood pressure, for example, and they will state that the data should come to the GP. The hospital may be providing the equipment, but now the GP is saying, ‘well, actually it’s my patient’. There is a whole political thing, in the background, and with social care. Is the hospital funding the device that is going out into the community? Is the GP funding it or is it coming out of the social
presents issues and technical training for the users will also be required. “I’m not sure that we are quite ready for it,”
one EBME leader commented. “We definitely need some guidance from MHRA with regards to managing equipment in the community,” another suggested. The delegates agreed that EBME leads
care budget?” he commented. “I think are we going to end up with a
patchwork of different routes across the country, as different areas decide on a different pattern,” he continued. “We have lots of patients with COPD who we provide CPAP devices to, via the chest clinic in our hospital. Patients come in to see our nurses for their health check-up and, if their device is due for a service, we come into the clinic and check it over. That’s fine, as it is controlled by the hospital, but what routes will there be for other devices in patients’ homes? And, if we’re going to get private sector providers involved, how is that going to impact, as well?” The panelists questioned how HealthTech in the community setting will be effectively managed and serviced, to ensure they are compliant. Loss of assets in the community
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17/03/2025 10:09:02 October 2025 I
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need to push for a model for the effective management of medical technologies, before the virtual ward initiative expands much further. This will be preferable to allowing things to develop and then trying to manage chaotic and fragmented systems further down the line. “We need to solve the problem before it becomes too big,” Iain Threlkeld summarised. Maintaining medical devices in the community will have significant work force implications – the NHS will require mobile engineers to visit people’s homes and a lot of time will be spent on travelling. Therefore, the health service will need to recruit and train many more engineers. It was suggested that the virtual hospital could learn a lot from the military, who have extensive experience of maintaining dispersed assets in the field. Pool kits are used on the battlefield, one of the delegates explained. One Trusts has implemented a system
where a box (effectively a pool kit) is sent out to patients in the community, with a pulse oximeter, BP machine and a thermometer, for example. The technologies are linked via an iPad and instructions are supplied in multiple languages (appropriate for the region). The set up is kept simple in order to cater
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