Under the 10 Year Health Plan, the government will undertake a national procurement for a new platform for “proactive, planned care”, offering expanded opportunities for remote monitoring. This is backed by further commitments to develop new payment models to encourage a shift in urgent and emergency care, offering financial incentives to drive neighbourhood health forward.
The intention is for the platform to be available to all NHS provider organisations, offering functionality including the ability to remotely monitor patients with data flowing through the NHS App and Single Patient Record. This will reportedly encourage the proactive management of patients to “become the new normal”, allowing clinicians to reach out at the first signs of deterioration to prevent emergency admissions to hospital.
Other planned functionality covers the creation of care plans and the management of evidence-based care processes, with generative AI potentially helping draft care plans for review; visualising and summarising the Single Patient Record with the ability to use ambient AI to capture data; and features such as workflow management to support the management of multidisciplinary teams.
Noting that currently hundreds of thousands of NHS staff work out in the community “without the benefit of digital technology”, the government pledges to take a national approach to procuring solutions for GPS tracking, emergency help buttons, and “live broadcast in emergency situations”.
Highlighting the value of technology in changing the way care is delivered for specialties such as dermatology, the government vows to take an active role in expanding similar approaches elsewhere, like in mental health, where it deems that virtual therapists could provide support and remote monitoring could offer a proactive response in crisis. “We will not allow privately provided digital healthcare to be the only option and we will increase the availability of virtual services for NHS patients,” it states.
To drive the neighbourhood health model forward, the government also plans for the introduction of financial incentives that encourage a shift in urgent and emergency care activity into the community. This will include support for virtual ward services. “Different approaches to bringing hospital care to people’s home reliably show value improvements,” it notes. “For example, one trial found that Hospital at Home is less expensive than inpatient treatment, with average savings of £2,265 per patient, per care episode.”
Also included in the 10 Year Plan is future functionality for the NHS App, which will become a “doctor in their pockets” for patients as a tool for access, empowerment, and care planning; creating a “full front door to the entire NHS”. It will offer remote or face-to-face appointment booking and signposting to the most appropriate service with the AI-enabled My NHS GP. Functionality will also be available for patients to connect with clinicians via remote consultations with My Consult.
More on reforming the UK health system
The 10 Year Health Plan shared details of new operating and workforce models, along with ambitions to increase innovation and the use of digital technologies to support efficiencies and ambitions such as prevention. Further details of the Single Patient Record have been shared to “operate as a patient passport”. To make this possible, “new legislation will place a duty on every health and care provider to make the information they record about a patient available to that patient”. For the workforce the plan highlights the need to ensure staff have the skills they need in a digitally enabled NHS and sets an objective to give the NHS “the most AI-enabled workforce in the world”, where staff will be AI trained, digitally confident and “have skills in modern leadership, transformation and innovation”.
For a recent HTN Now panel discussion, we were joined by experts from across the health sector to dissect the findings from Lord Darzi’s report, reflecting on what is holding the NHS back from innovation; the challenges and missed opportunities; and the role of digital and tech in driving change, supporting a focus on prevention and promoting integrated care. Panellists included Lee Rickles, CIO, director & deputy SIRO at Humber Teaching Hospitals; Andrew Jones, digital transformation leader at Amazon Web Services; Tracy McClelland, CCIO at Dedalus; and Dan Bunstone, clinical director at Warrington Innovation Network and Warrington ICB.
