Undoubtedly, global challenges faced by the pandemic have been at the core of innovation, at a rate previously unimaginable. It has also posed important questions to health systems globally.
The role of digital technology in realising the dream of accessible, affordable and sustainable care has grown across the entire range of health economies globally. The pandemic has enabled the NHS to achieve a level of digital transformation that might have otherwise taken several years. This has brought to the forefront the necessity of building digital healthcare systems that are personalised and truly patient centric.
As we move into the recovery period, it has been critical for the NHS to build on the progress made. The NHS reset campaign, launched in May 2020, identifies and adapts the best of COVID-19 related innovations into everyday practice, preserving the brilliant momentum the sector has seen these past few years, to inspire what the future of health and care should look like.
Madhukar Bose
This year NHS England announced the launch of the ‘What Good Looks Like programme’ (WGLL) to drive the digitally enabled healthcare transformation agenda forward. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation by 7 years[1] and it is vastly important that we build on this exceptional progress.
The NHS WGLL programme builds on established good practice to provide clear guidance for health and care leaders to digitise, connect and transform services, safely and securely. This will improve the outcomes, experience and safety of our citizens.
The WGLL framework highlights 7 success measures which aim to provide a strong foundation for digital practice, providing the tools and support healthcare organisations
with their digital transformation journey. 3 of the 7 areas within the WGLL framework are particularly impressive from an international perspective and need a closer look, these are: Ensure Smart Foundations; Improve Care; and Healthy Populations.
The 7 success measures of the NHS ‘What Good Looks Like’ Programme
Ensure Smart Foundations
Firstly, true digital transformation can only be enabled by ensuring the right infrastructure for data flows. This is hugely important to create an ecosystem that puts responsible innovation front and centre. This means putting in place digital data and infrastructure operating environments which are reliable, modern, secure, sustainable and resilient. The goal is to ensure that projects, programmes and services are:
- delivered through a multidisciplinary approach
- build towards net zero goals
- meet the Technology Code of Practice
- are cyber secure by design
Our UK innovative digital health companies are delivering on this vision, when they introduce their technologies into the UK’s NHS and private hospital environments.
BJSS, is one of the largest technology providers to the NHS. The company built the national system, Spine 2, which sits at the heart of all the patient identification, centralised health records and the secondary uses of data in the NHS in England.
With 50.2 million Electronic Patient Records (EHRs), TPP’s technology enables shared care across 7000+ Hospital and Outpatient services and 230,000+ users. It is a fantastic example of an integrated EHR solution and Personalised Health Record System. It is a centralised, cloud-based clinical system hosted on a single platform infrastructure.
Meanwhile, digital service delivery specialists Difrent are working to design, build and run user-centric digital services across Healthcare and Government. The company’s vision is to effect real, positive change and ensure public services truly meet the needs of the people they are intended to serve.
Lastly, in a move to accelerate digital transformation in healthcare in the UK, the two bodies responsible for NHS IT strategy and delivery, NHS Digital and NHSX, have been merged into NHS England & NHS Improvement. The aim here is to double down on efforts to create a more unified approach to achieving the goals of the WGLL programme.
Improve Care
Digital solutions are designed to enhance services for patients, ensuring they get the right care when they need it and in the right place. But to truly unlock the power of digital at scale firstly requires pathway transformation. This can help bring significant reductions in outpatient appointments, helping organisations to plug the demand-supply gap. It also means providing the tools to eliminate unwarranted variation across the entire care pathway and implementing virtual services that are fit-for-purpose.
It is important to note, with hospitals striving to catch up with a backlog, digital solutions can accelerate elective recovery and support new care pathways for patients, helping to improve the provision of care.
One important contribution is AI and machine learning. DemDX, is a pioneering diagnostics company who is working to provide a transparent, step-by-step machine-learning triage and diagnostic support tool aimed at improving the diagnostic accuracy and confidence of healthcare staff.
Babylon Health, one of the UK’s best known digital health companies, runs the country’s largest GP practice (by patient population) and having recently been publicly listed on the NYSE is set to grow its global footprint through the addition of integrated care-based solutions.
To help address the current radiology workforce crisis and give women better outcomes in their cancer treatments, Kheiron Medical Technologies has developed an AI breast screening solution. Their award-winning AI breast screening solution ‘Mia’ supports radiologists to read breast mammograms. This leading applied science company is committed to transforming cancer diagnostics through the power of deep learning.
Methods Analytics’ vision, meanwhile, is to measurably improve society by helping people make better decisions with data. The company provides an end-to-end data service, putting collaboration and user centricity at the heart of their unique offering.
Healthy Populations
Empowering population-based, digitally-driven models of care is another important success measure. This requires leveraging data to design and deliver improvements to population health and wellbeing, making the best use of collective resources. It also means deriving insights from data intelligence platforms including primary, secondary, mental health and community care to improve and address health inequalities.
One of the companies at the forefront of this crucial work is MyWay Digital Health, who are dedicated to delivering transformative care through affordable, evidence based, data-driven, scalable award-winning solutions. With a key focus on diabetes and long term conditions, their aim is to provide knowledge, advice and data predictions to patients and health care professionals.
In terms of other health areas, Cera Care is a technology-enabled home care provider using digital and AI to improve elderly care services. The company has built unprecedented machine learning algorithms, allowing it to predict health deteriorations before they occur with 83% accuracy. They are creating 15 digital healthcare hubs across the UK to deliver telehealth and medication services – matching the capacity of 1,000 care homes every day.
From Patients Know Best and Healthbit who offer patient-controlled health records to Elemental who offer a social prescribing platform and Congenica who offer end-to-end genomics capabilities, these world-class organisations represent key areas where the UK’s best innovations have something to offer globally, as the challenges they address are universal. Representing this body of innovation in a form that can be readily accessed by an international healthcare audience, poses a different problem altogether.
The UK’s Department for International Trade ‘Refreshed and Expanded 100 Playbook’
In response, Healthcare UK, part of DIT, has created an insightful and nuanced collection of not only leading UK innovators but companies who are dedicated to exporting, ready to work in partnership with healthcare providers and organisations overseas, via UK Embassy’s.
In February 2021, DIT launched the #First100 Digital Health companies for international projects, and now, 9 months later, there are successful projects that have been delivered as part of this. We are now going #beyond and expanding this to 165 UK Digital Health companies. The latest campaign and #Beyond 100 Expanded Playbook, will be launched at Arab Health 2022.
Digital Health is rightly seen as the answer to many of the challenges facing global healthcare, and ‘ The UK’s Beyond 100 Expanded Playbook’, provides an accessible showcase of some of the top digital health solutions.
Join us in the debate on the Next Steps for Digital Health
One of the key highlights taking place, is our Next Steps for Digital Health seminar. We are delighted to mention our keynote will be the NHS’s Digital Transformation Representative, leading the debate with our panel of UK and regional experts. Our seminar will be at Arab Health on Tuesday 25 January 2022.
Register for the event
https://ukhealthcarepavilion.com/events/arab-health-2022/
References
[1] https://www.consultancy.uk/news/26372/covid-19-has-accelerated-digital-transformation-by-seven-years
