What is your ‘digital day’ like? And where is healthcare in your ‘digital day’?
What is your ‘digital day’ like?
And where is healthcare in your ‘digital day’?
by Barry Shrier, CEO, The Health-Tech-Innovation-LABS
What is your typical ‘digital day’ like? And where is Healthcare in your ‘digital day’?
Recently I had an enjoyable and full day of business activities and I realised how 'digital' my days have now become.
And this caused me to reflect - so many aspects of my daily life are now enhanced by digital services; but how is my health ‘digitally’ enhanced? What’s out there now?
My digital day
Like most people, my day recently began with my alarm waking me up. The digital alarm - my iPhone - wakes me up with some of my favorite songs.
At breakfast I spent 10 seconds looking a digital live train schedule feed using the "Train Times" app to see if my train to London is running on time.
Once in London, as I often do, i fired up the "City Mapper" app to see if it would be faster or easier to walk to meetings, or take a tube or taxi.
During the day I got an email reminder from EasyJet on my iPhone, reminding me to check in for my flight to Berlin to attend the Bayer Pharma Grant4Apps conference. With the EasyJet app I checked in and also downloaded my paperless boarding pass.
So, digital tools help us throughout the day with travel and logistics issues.
Are there any hospitals in the UK with APPS for patients, to ‘check in’ before arrival, receive frequent updates on delays and waiting times, be ‘up sold’ and ‘cross sold’, etc? If not, why not?
Of course, throughout the entire day I was liaising with business colleagues, customers, and suppliers via our CRM platform Salesforce, my beloved project management platform Basecamp, and what seems to be an infinite portfolio of google docs LOL!
With the conference to attend the next day, and attending two conferences in London today, I realised I was low on business cards. So I searched for "same day printing of business cards" using GoogleMaps on my iphone. I found a superb supplier www.SimplyPrint.com & phoned them. I then phoned my usual business card printer (who is in Oxfordshire and doesn't do same day printing/delivery to London), and asked them to email me the printer-ready artwork. I then forward that artwork to the London printer - all via email from my iPhone. They sent me an email with a web-link to pay for the same-day printing- which took me to a nice "Sage Pay" website with my order clearly explained and I paid with my credit card... all on my phone.
Since I was attending a conference I didn't want to leave to collect the business cards which were printed and ready 2 hours after placing the order (what a great service by the way). So I used Uber on my iPhone, and had the taxi go straight to the printer, collect the cards, and bring them to me at the London Business Angels “Health-tech Entrepreneur Pitching Event” run by the superb “Angels in MedCity” initiative. The Uber taxi phoned me when he was at my location and I popped out of the conference for 3 minutes to collect my business cards.
With an 06:30 flight from London Gatwick airport to Berlin to catch the following morning, whilst still at the conference, I booked a hotel on www.LateRooms.com which turned out to be a hotel inside the airport so an easy walk in the evening from the train station to the hotel and very simple walk to my departure gate the next morning.
I recognize that all the fact-finding, travel planning, purchase transactions, and logistical accomplishments I've listed above are typical.
But now that I'm working (for the first time) in the healthcare technology sector I wondered: what am I doing digitally regarding my own health? What is out there NOW?
Well I’m pleased to see the world’s greatest health service - the NHS - is already (multiculturally) helping with consumer education regarding digital services. Here’s a photo of a poster is saw on my train to London:
Next, I'll began searching for my GP on my iPhone. Here's what I got from Google. Not bad.
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and I found this "Repeat Prescription Request Form". Very nice!
However I cannot find a way to make appointment to see my GP using this mobile service. So I'm taking a look at the main GP practice website on my phone. Hmmmm.... not bad if this was the year 1995…
I know that with Yelp, Just Eat, Deliveroo, etc I can find and make reservations at any restaurant and order practically any food for delivery to me at home or at the office. What about medicines?
Do you order medicines 'digitally'? Please share your experiences with us.
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I’ve invited my very dear friend Dr Jagdeesh Singh Dhaliwal, who is a GP Partner at Sycamore House Medical Centre, to comment about his ‘digital’ day and healthcare. Jag’s kindly added this:
“My day as a GP is already highly digital and - for a technophile like me - I’m delighted to be practising at a time of mushrooming healthcare digital technologies!
At our practice, all members of the healthcare team - including patients, nurses, admin staff and doctors - are making increasing use of our prize-winning online portal - www.sycamorehousesurgery.co.uk
Our patients were highly involved in the design of the portal. Listening to patients, we understood that the main jobs they want to do are to search for reliable information on their medical conditions, to learn which apps might help, to use novel ways to access our service and to have a quick and easy way of learning which services might help.
We encourage digital healthcare from the moment a patient feels they have a healthcare need, actively encouraging the use of the ‘search’ function to find information on symptoms or diagnosed conditions. ‘Self help’ information is provided on a variety of physical and mental health conditions. Signposting to health apps helps to suggest solutions to patients for monitoring and fine-tuning their well-being. We provide full records access to patients of their own records and the ability to book appointments and to order prescriptions online. Using our ‘Tell Us, Before We See You’ service, a patient can securely send information on their symptoms before they attend, so giving doctors more time to research potential diagnoses. ‘Book an Appointment’ signposts to a range of self-refer services which patients can use to ensure that they get to the ‘right person, first’.
The net effect: Better use of time for both patients and practitioners which has allowed us to move from the standard ten minute UK GP consultation length to fifteen minute consultations accompanied by an increase in patient satisfaction!
Good to see how - as well as helping with our shopping - digital technology is helping improve a profoundly more important commodity: Our healthcare.”
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How is your healthcare enhanced with digital services?
Please share with us your ‘digital health’ experiences.
Thank you
Barry Shrier
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