HEALTH MATTERS
●● WITH Dr Pete Wilson, GP at Bollington Medical Centre and clinical lead for research and innovation at NHS Eastern Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Vernonva Healthcare CIC proceeded to triage his condition on his chosen mode of communication.
The way healthcare is delivered by the NHS is changing, or certainly trying to.
Driven by the need for a more cost-effective long-term model, the ideal of treating more people in or close to home and the willingness of patients to seek advice and help in new formats, the government has invested significant resources into exploring what models may work best.
This is good news for our Caring Together programme, which is joining up health and social care services in the community to reduce ill health and help people with long-term conditions to live well.
Safe, patient-centred, efficient, quality care systems will not come from just another rehashing of who is in charge and who works where and with whom. Solutions for the future will not be adequately found by working with the same ‘tool box’.
Those in our local health communities looking to forge these new services and systems may know vaguely or specifically what type of technologies and innovations would help them but may not know where to look for them.
Life-science innovators find the NHS an impenetrable and suspicious market-place.
Learning to work together, chaperoned by the government-backed Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), Local NHS Innovation Services, and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and their local research networks, is going to be essential in the coming years if we are to succeed in achieving a true visible transformation and a visibly different healthcare system.
The handheld diagnostic ‘Tricorder’ device Dr McCoy used in Star Trek hasn’t appeared on the innovation horizon yet as far as I know, but there are some remarkably similar pieces of impressive technology which could be appearing in our consulting rooms sooner than you think! Watch this space.