Let all patients Skype their GP says minister

ALL patients should be able to Skype their GP on a smartphone, the Health Secretary says.

Matt Hancock accused the NHS of blocking a healthcare revolution by refusing to roll out virtual GP services across the country.

Mr Hancock, who became Health Secretary in July, personally uses the ‘GP at Hand’ app, which is available on the NHS in some parts of London.

The service offers video consultations with a doctor and assesses symptoms via a chatbot. It can also provide face-to-face GP appointments at one of five central hubs. It is run by private firm Babylon and is now attempting to expand across the country.

But NHS England has blocked the company’s plans to provide services in Birmingham, arguing that it cannot guarantee that its users will still receive invitations for national screening programmes.

Mr Hancock told the Daily Telegraph that he would offer his full backing to the service. He said: ‘GP at Hand is revolutionary – it works brilliantly for so many patients and goes with the grain of how people access modern services.

‘I want to see GP at Hand available to all, not based on their postcode. Where a new service challenges the system, the right response isn’t to reject the new service but to change the system. The current postcode lottery cannot continue.’ In a speech today, at Babylon’s London headquarters, Mr Hancock will urge health officials to ‘harness technology’ for the benefit of patients.

‘If we need to we will change the rules so we can harness new technology in a way that works for patients and practitioners,’ he is expected to say.

‘Global innovators like Babylon play a vital role in driving change in healthcare and we’re determined to work with them to develop healthcare solutions for our future.’ GP leaders are concerned about virtual consultations and fear they will miss serious, less obvious symptoms that doctors pick up when they see patients face to face. The Babylon app gives quick healthcare advice using a so-called ‘chatbot’ programme.

Patients type in their symptoms and after each message, the app responds with further questions to get more details, each time consulting a database of symptom and illnesses.

The programme uses an algorithm to judge the urgency of each situation before advising the patient what to do next.

The app is available privately, offering patients a video consultation with a GP for a £25 fee.

But last November, Babylon Health took over an NHS GP practice in Fulham, West London, and offered patients free virtual consultations on their smartphones as well as face-toface appointments.

The firm has encouraged patients in the area to de-register with their own surgery and join the new practice and 20,000 patients signed up in the first six months.

But doctors are worried the app undermines the doctor-patient relationship because patients are consulted by strangers they have never met who do not have access to their notes.

Mr Hancock has said he downloaded the Babylon app two months before he became Health Secretary.