The document discusses how healthcare delivery has not changed as much as other industries like banking and retail in moving services online, but that is starting to change. It highlights an initiative in Birmingham where Digital Life Sciences has launched a clinical contact center that allows 60,000 patients to access phone or video consultations with doctors and nurses from 8am to 6:30pm on weekdays. This has helped reduce strain on primary care by addressing 70% of issues remotely rather than in-person visits. The goal is to transform and improve patient access to a more efficient healthcare model through digital technologies.

1. Delivering healthcare in a digital world
A digital healthcare
model can take the
heat off primary care
An Opinion Piece
By Robin Vickers, Executive Director and Founder
Digital Life Sciences

2. 2
It’s a startling fact that since 1989, 40% of banks
and building societies on Britain’s high streets
have closed.
While on the face of it this seems like a stark
reduction, for the most part it is simply the outcome
of our migration towards phone and online services
over the past decades.
Changing consumer behaviour has forced the
banking, retail and travel industries to change the
way they deliver services - from creating slick,
interactive websites we can manage our money and
purchases from, to increasing self-service in stores.
Strikingly, however, health has not travelled in the
same direction. Less than 1% of us in the UK are
organising our healthcare online.
In fact, the basic model for how people access
their healthcare hasn’t changed much in at least 60
years. We remain fixated with the eight-minute GP
consultation and people still turn up to wait in long
queues at surgeries in the morning in the hope of
seeing a doctor.
This is a situation we now have an opportunity to
change. In the process, we can make the NHS
more sustainable.
The potential benefits for
primary care
Take the warnings we’ve heard recently about
primary care. The Royal College of General
Practitioners (RCGP) has said up to 600 surgeries
could close in the coming year as more and more
GPs come up to retirement and younger recruits
become scarcer.
The political response from both Labour and the
Conservatives has been to promise thousands of
new GPs, however realistic that is.
A digital healthcare model can
take the heat off primary care
More than 80% of the
UK population uses
broadband to transact.
However less than 1%
of patients currently use
the internet to interact
with their clinicians.
Robin Vickers, Digital Life Sciences
All figures apply to UK:
OFCOM 2013/14 and NHS England
For example in
Birmingham, one
partnership...will shortly
have three local hubs with
specialised GP’s that will
link in community and
social care services while
providing central out-of-
hours services using new
technology.
To help others who want
to evolve in this way,...we
will work with emerging
practice groups to address
barriers to change,
service models, access
to funding, optimal use of
technology, workforce and
infrastructure
Simon Stevens,
Chief Executive NHS England
Five Year Forward View,
October 2014
The service is proving extremely popular, with up to
800 callers per day already making use of it. Over
three-quarters of the calls are answered within 30
seconds by call centre agents who after an initial
conversation with the patient, book same-day
Skype or phone consultations with the first available
appropriate healthcare professional. The healthcare
professional is then able to resolve the call remotely
or book the patient in for a same-day face to face
appointment.
Appointments are being booked throughout the
day, moving away from the usual morning rush and
meaning people don’t have to plan their whole day
around a trip to the doctor’s.
But what’s most remarkable is the fact that 70%
of these callers are having their problem dealt with
remotely, rather than needing to come in to see
the doctor. The average duration of a call between
doctor and patient is also just five minutes –
meaning doctors can speak to far more patients in
the course of a day.
Importantly, this also frees up primary care doctors
to spend their face-to-face time treating people with
more complex needs and this saves money down
the line by reducing the number of acute hospital
admissions and the need for community care.
This greater efficiency saves the whole NHS money.
While so much political focus has been about bolt-
on extras to our existing services – more doctors
here, longer hours there – what we really need is to
entirely rethink the way in which we deliver services
so that they better meet patient demand.
Take it online, deliver it online, and you change
the whole service and cost model. For us, this
isn’t just a hypothetical argument – we are putting
it into practice in one of Britain’s most diverse
communities right now, and it’s working.
And it’s not just about money; it is about making
sure we have an fair system that works for everyone
who interacts with it.
Digital health shouldn’t be an obsession with
databases and records – it should be about using
the technological tools we have to improve people’s
access to healthcare.
But for all the good intentions, this discussion leads
us down a dead-end street. What we need is a
transformed model of delivering healthcare at scale
that can be used by all of us, making better
use of the human resources the NHS already has.
In Birmingham, Digital Life Sciences is pioneering
what this future primary care model could look
like, in partnership with a GP ‘super-practice’, The
Vitality Partnership. We have launched a clinical
contact centre or ‘hub’ which can be accessed via
the web, phone or a dedicated mobile and tablet
app for a local population of 60,000.
Three practices are already offering phone and
Skype consultations with a doctor or prescribing
nurse from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday, with
more set to follow.
Eventually, it’s envisaged that all patients in the
group’s area will be able to access this hub from
8am to 8pm, seven days per week.

3. To find out more about the work we are doing with the Vitality Partnership in the
West Midlands to transform patient experiences and primary care pathways,
please get in touch.
Digital Life Sciences Limited
www.digitallifesciences.co.uk
London: 0208 600 9300
Birmingham: 0121 663 0300
We listen, we innovate, we make a difference.
Healthcare is beginning to mature
in its use of the internet. Just as
other industries such as travel,
banking and retail are using digital
technologies to offer better services
to customers, so healthcare is starting
to use digital tools to improve what
it offers to patients. Our mission is
to become the UK’s first truly digital
healthcare provider.