Throwing Money At A Problem Or A Strategic Investment in Our Health

Can you book an appointment with your GP just now? Can you access a repeat perscription service online? Does your child have an electronic health record which tells you when their immunisations are happening?

The investment in digital methods in health care and well-being in the UK has generally been poor. While most industry now use digital methods as a standard way of doing business, we have very little meaning full digital engagement between citizens and the NHS. The failed Connecting for Health programme, which wasted over £15 billion for public funds, perhaps shows that the NHS needs to understand how it can operate in a digitally focused word.

And so it is announced a few days ago [here] that there will be an extra £450m for new IT systems for GPs. But are we just throwing money at the NHS, and hoping that something will stick? To me the government needs to define the basic standards that every single citizen will have, rather than just allowing GP practices to purchase what they want, and end up with incomparable systems, and implement a patchy infrastructure. GPs will then be measured against the metrics, of which some things needs to be centralised, and other things could perhaps be implemented on a local level.

From what I know about cyber security, the integration into cloud based services, and with virtual desktops is the way that most organisations have gone.

By 2022, we should have:

• Every citizen will be able to book an appointment on-line. Centralise these services, and make it a consistent user interface.
• Every citizen will be able to access an on-line repeat prescription service. This is one of the top services that citizens want, and would save time, money and errors. Again centralisation is the way forward here.
• Every citizen will be able to register an email address and telephone number with the NHS, and for appointments to be tracked with email reminders.
• No citizen will every have to repeat the same information onto a piece of paper. I registered for a new GP practice recently, and I had to fill-in all my details on a bit of paper, and which was then typed into a computer system. I still have no real health record that can be transferred between different parts of the health care system.
• Every citizen will have the option to meet the GP over video conference for a consultation, if required. Nothing can beat a chat with your GP, but, when we are ill, why should be infect a whole lot of other people?
• The maximum time for an appointment will be set by each health board.
• Every child born in the UK will have an electronic Red Book, and which is supported by GPs. This is crazy that we do not have this!
• Every citizen will have the rights to access their electronic health record and review.

For Cyber Security, the NHS is a long way behind industry standards, and you will often see poorly defined security:

The NHS needs to better understand data and how it flows through its infrastructure.

Please don't waste this money!