Right app-roach to health care

It may seem like a product only found in top-notch private health centres, but a new app introduced at hospitals in Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells is deemed essential to keep the NHS on top of new trends and technology.

In a world where many of us think digital first, surely it is only right for patients to expect high-tech healthcare, however many argue that the personal touch is more important.

Many hospitals are littered with coloured forms displaying graphs and tables, all of which have to be filled out by hand before being entered into a computer program.

A cost of £800,000 may sound like a large amount of money for a trust with recent financial woes to be spending on a product they have done without for many years, but it’s modernising health care, and surely reducing just one mistake would make it worthwhile?

The app is being rolled out along with more than 1,200 iPhones, iPads and iPods to doctors and nurses on the wards.

It combines information on patients, including breathing rate, blood pressure, pain scores and heart rate, which are observed by doctors and nurses.

The money spent could be used to provide 38 new nurses on the national starting salary of £21,000 a year per, and only time will tell if patients are happy with doctors burying their heads in smartphones by the bedside.

There will be many doctors and nurses as reluctant as patients to make the change from paper to mobile, however, at a time when more of us use smartphones and tablets to complete everyday tasks, surely it makes sense to move towards digitising one of the UK’s most traditional institutions.