The Health Secretary launched a consultation on the government’s move to transform the NHS in England from ‘analogue to digital.’
As part of this consultation, Wes is unveiling plans for “patient passports,” which contain health data that GPs, hospitals, and ambulance services can swiftly access.
TTE consider this one of those claims that need fact-checking. As an urgent care GP, CH can access your medical records through the NHS Spine. Its benefits include enabling critical services to provide frontline care by providing real-time patient data.’
To access these data, you need an NHS Care Smartcard that ensures secure access. You also need to ask the patient's permission, which you can bypass - with stated reasons - in an emergency. National Electronic Patient Record (EPR) coverage stood at 88% in 2022. With a £2 billion investment, the target is for 95% of trusts to have EPR by March 2025.
As TTE sees it, the only difference between Wes’s big consult and what is currently available is that you can see your records on your phone. Doctors can already swiftly access patient health care data. What’s unclear is whether Wes knows that these data are already available and half a million health professionals use it daily.
Regarding consultations, TTE is tired of their regularity. Every new government or health secretary wants to consult with the public. Unlike other parts of the system, presumably, there are no waiting lists for this.
NHS England reports 483 closed consultations; 40 so far occurred in 2024.
The previous government reported on the NHS's digital transformation in September 2023, and the Health and Social Care Committee heard evidence related to this transformation.
‘Digitalising health and care records for interoperability so that they can be accessed across primary, secondary and social care; legacy IT systems in the NHS, and; the how digital health inequalities could be prevented to inform patients of the potential benefits of digital approaches to healthcare.’
In 2018, Matt Hancock's vision was for a more tech-driven NHS - Matt wanted to ‘move to a world in which a citizen’s patient record can be securely accessed by themselves and staff according to clinical need.’ 2018 saw the launch of the NHS App.
The other part of Wes’s NHS Plan involves shifting the focus from sickness to prevention by rolling out smartwatches and wearable tech.
Smartwatches are popular because they can track various health measures, such as heart rate, sleep patterns, and physical movement. However, the number of studies supporting their use is limited because they were developed for convenience rather than medical diagnosis and monitoring.
Wearable devices for monitoring show early promise in conditions such as diabetes. However, systematic reviews conclude that further evidence is required to validate these wearable devices' application, efficacy, and real-world impact.
In 2021, NHSX closed the NHS Apps library. The closure was based on several factors, mainly because the library apps did not have an evidence base and did not meet clinical unmet needs.
After three years of trying to lead the digital transformation of health and social care, NHSX was disbanded in 2022. With another reshuffling of the NHS entities, the Transformation Directorate at NHS England subsumed its duties. To say the remit is familiar doesn’t do it justice: the Transformation Directorate would accelerate the digitally enabled transformation of the NHS and improve it, both for its staff and the people it serves at the time they are most in need. Sound familiar.
In 2023, the Health Select Committee noted that the Department and NHS England should collaborate to introduce a more comprehensive accreditation scheme for third-party healthcare apps.
Medical apps must undergo regulatory approval to ensure they are safe, ethical, and high quality for patients and healthcare professionals. The vast majority are based on little or no science, and when it comes to certain conditions, such as mental health, they can make the situation worse.
Health apps and wearables might be helpful in a few specific conditions with high-quality evidence of a clinical difference; however, they're no substitute for face-to-face appointments.
The latest consultation is similar to previous government attempts to revolutionise the health service through digitisation. In 2019, the NHS long-term plan, also known as the 10-year plan, was published. NHS England’s Chief executive, Simon Stevens, said: “As part of the NHS Long-Term Plan, we are going to be using new technologies and treatments to improve patient care and save more lives. Whether it's a 5- or 10-year plan depends on being re-elected.
The danger of mindless reliance on “digital transformation” is demonstrated by Apps wheeled out during the Covid era. Apps that had a prominent role in driving the panic. They were pinging a syndrome (influenza-like symptoms) without identifying active cases of SARS-CoV-2.
The consultation and all the techie stuff distract from the real problems facing patients using the NHS. Time and money could be saved by cancelling the BIG CONSULT and getting on with the real job of patient care.
This post was written by two old geezers who are fed up with watching the same movie whenever a new Health Secretary or government pops up. IT is no substitute for elbow grease. Here at the TTE office, we would also like to know if anyone has any new ideas beyond tech and big data.
We seem to live in a world run by control freaks. Apart from the desired information already being available, as you said, the idea of funnelling more and more aspects of our existence into spy phones looks to me like a fool's errand. What about the all-eggs-in-one-basket risk? We caught a glimpse of that with the Crowdstrike meltdown earlier this year that affected a wide range of businesses. Only last week, Waitrose had a separate computer glitch that meant they could only allow customer in that day who could pay in cash. Then there's the stupidity of thinking that you can make people healthier and/or solve organsations problems with more micro-management.
I've pointed out elsewhere that this 'consultation' reminds me fatally of a 'consultation' instigated by Chairman Mao in the 1950s, called 'Let a thousand flowers blossom' - on the future of the Chinese society. Well, all those who grasped this tiny bit of freedom and participated ended swiftly in re-education camps. Here in the UK I see it as mixture of validating whatever this government wants to do - sugar tax, for example - with the explanation that 'the people want it'. Moreover, this just bring it all one step closer to the Chinese 'social credit scheme' - and why not, didn't SAGE think that following the Chinese into Lockdown was a very good idea?
As for this:
"In 2019, the NHS long-term plan, also known as the 10-year plan, was published. NHS England’s Chief executive, Simon Stevens, said: “As part of the NHS Long-Term Plan, we are going to be using new technologies and treatments to improve patient care and save more lives."
Words fail me! Are the DHSC civil serpents so bereft of ideas, is Labour so bereft of ideas that they think a regurgitation of a five-year-old exercise will do very well again? In a reversal of the Biblical saying, it's now 'old wine into new wineskins' ...