The NHS is tackling massive challenges and is quickly becoming the lead on raising quality care standards and providing personalisation and control to patients in healthcare. Central to this approach has been to open up the NHS to innovation (executed first by publishing principles and strategies in the personalised health and care 2020 document) and to actively discuss concrete goals, challenges and expectations in the Eastern AHSN’s first Partner Forum.
Tim Kelsey, Director of the NHS, in particular outlines the following from the forum:
- [The NHS] needs to give people their own data (it’s not the NHS’s data). From next March all patients can get summary and comprehensive personal data – the UK will be the first country in the world to do this.
- From 2018 [the NHS] will provide access on all patient data, and give people ability to write into their record, so that the record becomes a digital record of a conversation between patient and clinician.
- Another area that is very important is providing access to data for clinicians when and where needed. 60% of junior doctors’ time is spent on admin. [The NHS] needs to very quickly to reduce paper – and become digital.
- From next April, commissioners will specify a standard for this – it’s not about technology standards, but about the financial commissioning structures and the regulatory regime. Digital standards are as important as any other care standards.
Giving ownership of medical records to patients across the country raises the first and most common question – can patients control their medical records?
From the Perinatal Institute to HIV patients to charities like AKU society, Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, CEO of PKB, demonstrates that patient controlled records are already here and scalable. These records are helping deliver better maternity care. They are helping HIV patients understand CD4 counts. They are reducing readmissions to hospitals They are bridging the gap between researchers, clinicians and patients. Additionally, giving patients control of their records reduces the problem of fragmentation in the healthcare system.
More on presentations and talks from the Partner’s Forum can be found on their site here.