Smart technology and digital innovations must be embraced by the NHS to help ease the strain on overworked GPs. New technologies allow GPs to collect patient data remotely through apps and help keep patients out of hospitals. Innovative services also help patients better manage long-term conditions through online support groups and health coaching. For GPs to meet increasing demands, the whole NHS must make use of these new digital tools and technologies.

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Smart technology must be at the heart of any GP
efficiency drive
By: Dr Mohammad Al­Ubaydli,
Jump to Comments
founder and CEO Patients Know Best
Published: Tuesday, October 7, 2014 ­16:
01 GMT
If GP surgeries are to open twelve hours a day, seven days a week, digital healthcare
innovation must be embraced by the whole of the NHS to ease the strain on our
already over-worked GPs.
GPs have long been at the forefront of digital in the NHS. The first GP in the UK to use an
electronic medical records system was also the first GP in the world to do so – back in 1975. NHS
GP spending is 6­8%
of the government’s healthcare budget, but GPs maintain digital records on
100% of their patients – more than any other NHS organisation. These records form the
backbone of the NHS – GPs are the ones who know the patients and they’re the ones who
everyone else relies upon.
Today, the challenge is for GPs to work efficiently with all the other institutions helping NHS
patients. Patients are treated or cared for by an ever­increasing
range of healthcare providers,
including hospitals, local councils, third sector or private sector providers, and of course the
patient themselves. Patients with long­term
conditions can self­assess
and self­manage,
they are
providers of information and care. The only way to work with all of them is using innovative
technologies and services. However, the whole of the NHS must embrace these new innovations
if GPs are to deliver the care patients deserve – and politicians expect.
For example, it’s now easier than ever for GPs to collect clinically accurate data from the patient
whilst the patient is at home – avoiding a visit to the surgery. Apps like uMotif enable doctors to
collect routine patient data on a range of long­term
conditions like Diabetes, Hypertension and
Asthma. Where once, patients with Parkinson’s Disease would have to be examined in person to
assess their response to medications, tapping the screen on a phone can provide the
assessments more frequently and more conveniently. This is why Cure Parkinson’s highlighted
UMotif’s smartphone app.
Technology can keep the patient at home rather than needing to visit A&E. The South East Coast
Ambulance Service (Secamb) is pioneering a new system which gives their own ambulance
crews access to a patient’s GP care plan before they reach the scene of an emergency. Armed
with the right information – which might give details of the patient’s condition and what the normal
protocols for treatment are – ambulance staff are better equipped to treat a patient at the scene of
an emergency.
When this happens, the patient wins as they receive more immediate care and might not need to
be admitted to A&E. The GP wins because they don’t need to be consulted and called into the
hospital, and the NHS wins because it saves huge costs involved with unplanned A&E
admissions. Secamb have reduced trips by ambulance to A&E from 67% to just 40% of incidents
that start as a home visit.
Lastly, new innovative services are making sure that patients are learning how to look after
themselves better. Clinicians and GPs are experts in medicine – not teachers of behaviour
change. But most NHS spending goes to treating patients with long term conditions – those most
at need of making a change to their behaviour: diet, exercise, taking the right pills, stopping taking
harmful substances.
This is why GPs now “prescribe” Know Your Own Health (KYOH) to patients alongside a course
of drug treatments. A KYOH health coach develops a care plan with (that's "with" not "for") the
patient and helps them stick to the plan. The platform also offers online and offline, peer­to­peer
support around mutual goals in local communities. Often, people manage their condition by
learning from others and feeling accountable to a group of their peers who share the same goal. It
is services like this which not only help the patient manage their condition, but ensure that routine
visits to the GP are cut and emergency visits to A&E are minimised.
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So for me, it’s not a case of asking already hard working GPs to work even longer, it’s a case of
looking at how the whole of the NHS can work smarter – using the latest innovations in healthcare
that are already available. Patients deserve it, GPs deserve it and we will all benefit as a result.
Dr Mohammad Al­Ubaydli
is founder and CEO of Patients Know Best. Dr Al­Ubaydli
trained
as a physician at the University of Cambridge and is the author of seven books on IT and
healthcare. He is an honorary senior research associate at UCL medical school for his
research on patient­controlled
medical records and in 2012, was elected an Ashoka Fellow
as a social entrepreneur for the contributions he has made to patient care.
Links: Know Your Own Health (http://kyoh.org/) ; Cure Parkinson’s
(http://www.cureparkinsons.org.uk/Default.aspx); South East Coast Ambulance Service (Secamb)
(http://www.secamb.nhs.uk/); uMotif (https://www.umotif.com/);
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