The 10-Year Health Plan calls for three important shifts in the way health and care is delivered. Technology enabled care, wearables and remote devices will need to become an integral part of the strategy. Steve Wightman offers an insight into the challenges and opportunities ahead.
he government's commitment to the three big shifts in health and care — from analogue to digital, hospital to community and sickness to prevention — are rarely out of the news headlines. It is a common mantra that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, and his minsters cite in almost all of their speeches and interviews. It is also the backbone of the NHS 10-Year Health Plan, which was recently published.
In the case of moving healthcare upstream to deliver more in primary care and the community and providing more predictive-led services, we have a long way to go. Not only does it require investment and reform in the infrastructure of these different care settings so they have the capacity to take on more care, but there also needs to be more effective commissioning models, greater collaborative working between health and care professionals, and a significant change in public perception of where and how they will be treated. This is just a few of the obstacles that need to be overcome.
Perhaps the most straightforward shift is from analogue to digital, primarily because the NHS isn't starting from ground zero — there are plenty of fantastic examples of digitisation across the health service. Advanced technology is already available, not least in the case of remote monitoring, wearables and technology enabled care (TEC).
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