April edition - out now
Digital Care
Supporting health tech innovators & healthcare organisations to revolutionise care, with digital enablement
Welcome to the second edition of Digital Care News! A precis of the top three stories that caught my eye this month, plus something I have been up to in April - which seems to have flown! Tara Donnelly, Founder, Digital Care.
Three Top Stories April?
Dr Benn Gooch is a GP based in Oxford, who wrote a brilliant Linked In post recently and crystallised some thoughts in my mind. I commend it to you!?Short extract below - emboldening mine - but do read the whole thing -
“I’ve been thinking about this, a lot.
I’m a busy NHS GP and have always been aware that sometimes the patient in front of me is not always the patient that needs to be in front of me. In short, sometimes I’m seeing the wrong people.?Time and time again people living with multiple complex conditions face obstacles in accessing timely medical care. […]
At the intersection between population health analytics, targeted and finite patient physiologic monitoring and pre-symptomatic medical intervention lies the key to unlocking a transformative healthcare paradigm. Maybe not tomorrow or next year but it’s coming. Waiting for symptoms to manifest and trusting citizens know when to identify themselves as patients is a model which fails too many people.
Until health systems use population data to identify individuals in need and services are designed to deliver proactive medical care we will not see the advances our population deserve.”?
The work to move from a vibrant cottage industry of digital home care to an Industrial Revolution is all about this. I’ve emboldened the section above. Can we bring together the knowledge we have about who is in most need, with at scale digital home care - likely in my mind to be delivered in bigger Health Hubs, such as those in MerseyCare and Airedale - and deliver proactive healthcare to prevent crises, deterioration and admissions??
The answer for me is yes we absolutely can, and indeed we must. 70% of hospital beds are occupied by someone who has a long term condition and the best sites in the country are reducing readmissions for people with major conditions such as COPD and Heart Failure by a stunning 50%. I would love this to become the absolute norm for those living with longer term conditions and help them spend more time well at home.?
Whole thing here -?
2. Interested in Virtual Wards? Sign up here!?
Once a month, a really useful newsletter comes out from the team at NHS England. If you are advancing virtual wards in your patch or simply interested in keeping up to date, do sign up. It is full of great updates, links to films and shared ideas from teams working across the country.?
It includes links to films such as this useful virtual ward explainer made by West Herts Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
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The link to sign up is here?-
3. Virtual Wards - the lessons so far & future priorities?
This I thought was a useful and very balanced read on Virtual Wards from the Nuffield Trust as a write up from a roundtable they convened.?
“The expansion of virtual wards – which help patients to manage their health and care at home – is considered an important component of NHS planning for next winter. Following discussions with members of BT’s clinical advisory board and drawing on wider evidence and the latest policy developments, Rachel Hutchings and Nigel Edwards discuss the priority areas where further development and action could help improve virtual wards’ effectiveness.”
What I got up to in April
I was delighted to be interviewed by Emma Hall on all things digital home care and why it must be such a key part of the strategy for the future of healthcare, in Future Medicine AI, published in April.?
“In this interview with Tara Donnelly, we discuss how digital home care has advanced in recent years, the benefits it confers to patients, and several barriers that have hindered the digital health revolution. Tara provides her insights into how virtual wards can alleviate pressure on the NHS and how the field of digital home care will evolve in the future.”
In the interview I commend the advance of virtual wards but explore the potential in long term condition care:?
“Digital home care has several aspects, the huge growth in virtual wards across the NHS in England is part of that, with over 100,000 individuals cared for in the past year. More than 4,000 people will have woken up this morning in their own bed, while receiving remote monitoring, when they would otherwise have been in hospital with an acute health need. But there are other aspects of digital home care, such as care for long term conditions provided at home and vital sign monitoring for those who call a care home ‘home’. The types of long-term conditions where we are seeing digital home care have the most impact are heart failure, COPD (a progressive lung disease), diabetes and high blood pressure.”
Note that you do need to register to access it - and the rest of the resources on the site - but that is completely free.?