The long-term sustainability of our health and social care services is dependent on a number of key issues, including staffing, funding and having the right digital foundations in place.
With remote patient monitoring set to have twice as many users globally by 2024, it’s clear that we need to consider new ways of working, build on our abilities to coordinate partnerships, drive cultural change and adopt digital solutions to continue delivering care that is safe and efficient.
Gary Steen, chief operating officer at Tunstall Healthcare, discusses the digital transformation of our health and care services, the barriers to integration, and what the impacts will mean for end users.
The barriers to investment
While the health and social care system is diverse and complex, the principles on which it is based are simple and uniform. Care and support focused on the needs of individuals, leading to a better quality of life for people who access these services and those who care for them.
As more evidence of the economic and social return on investment through technology comes to light, we can see an increasing acceptance and a renewed perceived value of the importance of the role of technology in service provision. However, it is consistently clear that various pressures make this ever more challenging to implement effectively.
Despite technology continuing to revolutionise our lives at home, businesses and the economy, health and social care providers are only now beginning to fully invest in and understand the revolution that is taking place. From the convergence of mobile communications, to machine learning and data analytics, many professionals in the sector have yet to fully understand the significant benefits that technology can provide.
Even though more homes than ever have access to modern technology, there continues to be a disparity in who can acquire and use it, particularly for disabled and older people who have always been disproportionately at risk of digital exclusion. This leads to our health and social care services being unable to fully realise the social implications and benefits of our newly hyper-digitised society across the spectrum of service users.
Imagination is needed to translate data-driven evaluations into compelling stories that demonstrate how they can meet needs, save precious time and help staff deliver better and more preventative care. However, increasing time pressures on our services thanks to funding shortages, growing waiting lists and staff retention rates, are also impacting how much time professionals can invest in exploring emerging technologies and setting the technical direction of our health and care services.
A dearth of market intelligence and patchy digital infrastructure across the country is also significantly impacting our ability to invest in and deliver technologically-enabled care services to citizens. The digital transformation of the UK’s communications infrastructure which is due to be completed 2025 will enable more predictive approaches and a more robust and faster infrastructure that will join up stakeholders and deliver more effective and personalised health care.
The benefits of technology
As our sectors invest further in technology we will see improved outcomes delivered to users through evidence based care plans that are personalised and support the needs of individuals. This will encourage greater independence as end users become more confident in managing their own conditions.
Technology can also broaden the circle of care available to vulnerable people by enabling collaboration with clinicians, care providers and other experts who may not be reachable through more traditional channels, such as face-to-face appointments. This also encourages health and social care organisations to work collaboratively, rather than in silo to deliver connected care services.
When we achieve successful and integrated digital services for citizens, the benefits flow through the system to primary, secondary, community, social and health care services. If we get our approach right, citizens stay in the place of their choice for longer, delaying entry into residential care and reducing the need for more complex interventions.
As our services become more digitally enabled, we’ll also be able to generate insight that is derived from data which, in turn will support more effective assessment and care planning, and enable caregivers to identify changes in behaviour and mitigate these before more complex and expensive care is required.
The future transformation of health and care provision
The forces that will define the next decade of our health and care services have already begun to take shape, and our growing ability to transition to new technologies that can manage, analyse and harvest actionable intelligence will be crucial to the success of our services in the future.
The shift to a digital health and care network is inevitable and already underway, thanks to the work of telecoms and health tech providers, alongside future-gazing professionals within health and social care. It is crucial that health and care providers are made aware of the timings and impact that this shift will have on their service delivery and end users.
Inaction could lead to dangerous failures in essential services, and therefore coordinated action must be taken to ensure the 2.5 billion people that currently require one or more digital and assistive products are protected. A health and care system fit for the 21st century must have digital innovation at its core.
Wider digital transformation and the application of health data analytics is now seen as vital to the smarter management of operations, allocation of resources, collaboration across teams and services, and ultimately better delivery of care. However, we still have a long way to go before this is fully realised.
As we look to a more digital future, we must consider how we can best harness the power of the connected world and the value that can come from technology solutions. The next step in the evolution of this predictive care technology will use advanced AI to detect whether someone’s health could be about to deteriorate, spot a potentially undiagnosed condition and suggest the most appropriate course of action.
By committing to investment in more technological solutions, we will reform how our services are commissioned, reshape consumer markets, unlock technological innovation and boost awareness of independent living technology across society.
