Just digital patient engagement or full active participation?
Updated: Feb 11, 2022
By 2018 patients should have access to their medical records online. By 2020 this should have evolved into a digital patient engagement solution as health and social care achieves “paperless at the point of care” working practices. But is it just about engagement, or should we be preparing more for active participation and ownership of health concerns and issues.
Digital Transformation of Service Delivery
Most concern shared is that the NHS 2020 Digital proposals are still not making adequate plans to exploit the opportunity provided by Internet of Things (IoT), Wearables and Assisted Living technologies, and at the earliest.
The current focus is being given to resolving internal data integration / flow issues which do need resolving. Acknowledging that there are clinical and information governance concerns as well as care benefits needing to be addressed. But whilst these in the main deliver service quality and improved workflow for people already in the system. Their support for delivery of a transformed and more sustainable service delivery model is limited.
Transformation of the service delivery model and improvement in future sustainability of any significance for health and social care, is largely dependent on the digital patient engagement (or better – participation) and capabilities delivered by technology innovation incorporated to support pro-active participation. The opportunity and benefits potential is significant, when the service delivery model evolves from one that is largely re-active and after the fact, to an alternative and more sustainable pro-active and well-being orientated model.
These benefits are only going to be enhanced by any ability to integrate and exploit technology innovations and automation delivered by IoT, wearables, assisted living and health and care / well-being monitoring innovations and solutions. Adoption of these technologies will increase as they become more capable and with this increase the range of proactive information and data supporting opportunities for further cost saving interventions and / or preventions will also increase.
Data Governance and Management
Consequently the long-term objective of any digital health and care engagement solution, should be about providing the means to help us to live well, and if we are unfortunate enough to have one or more long term chronic conditions or disability, to be empowered to manage our situation as much and as well as we can. It is never though just about us and individuals, we pretty much all care for or are cared by somebody else. So we should be able to gain access to others information too.
All of the above inevitably leads to an explosion of information becoming available, and of the most personal and sensitive kind! Consent, data ownership / management quickly become the most important considerations in any engagement solutions design that needs to be open to accommodate future technology innovations delivering on the pro-active health and well-being opportunity.
It is, however, widely acknowledged that local developments and deployments are not being guided by core common engagement and consent model or universal data flow / integration standards, of concern consequently, the progress to a better model of health and care continues to evolve with massive variations in capability delivered differently across regions.
Conclusion
Until the need for core common standards on data consent, governance and interoperability are fully addressed, then the participation of patients and citizens with the digital solutions will likely remain inhibited, subsequently the opportunity to achieve the £20b of universal benefits from a transformed service delivery model by 2020 will very likely remain an elusive and much less assured target that it could otherwise be.
References and Links
Article produced in response to news item Health wearables firm Fitbit holds talks with NHS published by Digital Health