Scottish Health Innovations Ltd

Technology - A prescription for better healthcare
Innovative technology will play a major role in delivering the quality of healthcare service required to meet the changing demands made on the NHS.

That was the clear message from industry professionals addressing the 5th Convergent Technologies Showcase.

Andy Taylor, Director of Healthcare Policy for the Association of British Healthcare Industries, told delegates: “If we are going to have long term, high quality, healthcare we have to devise technologies.”

He maintained that technology unlike labour was not a “driver of cost” and added: “We need to harness technology to reduce costs. We can’t afford to invest much more in people. We have to use technology much more effectively.” 

In his address to delegates attending the event held at Stirling University Management Centre he argued that there needs to be change in the way healthcare industry and the NHS do business.

“High level government policy says we need science, we need to boost SMEs and innovation. Industry makes the products but are they adopted. That is an issue for the NHS.  Government funding of innovation should also assist in its adoption,” he claimed.

“What has to change is that we need a customer who says we need this service or product. The NHS needs to be more open to SMEs. There is also a greater need for industry to engage with the ultimate buyer – the NHS- and think about how to promote innovation.”

He revealed that this kind of approach to procurement was tested a few months ago when the industry was asked to present government with innovative ideas for services and products that could be adopted by the NHS. 

One hundred proposals were submitted and analysis showed that the top eight were judged to have the potential to save the NHS a staggering £4 Billion a year.

Realistically he admitted that figure was “cloud cuckoo land” but that if even 10% was achieved it would still save in the region of half a billion pounds a year.

He added: “I would say the NHS has got the bit between its teeth on that. It’s not a sales approach rather how can we respond to a call for help. I think we will develop that. It is one of the best things to have happened recently.”

While a new government is now in place the key point for the industry, says Andy Taylor, is the approach of the NHS.

“It is the leadership of the NHS that has been driving the thinking about how you save money and how you involve people buying technology and I don’t thank that is going to change.”

Dr Christoph Thuemmler discussed international developments in the healthcare industry pointing out areas of opportunity for UK businesses.

Asia he said placed the emphasis on manufacturing, leaving major opportunities for service provision in the healthcare sector.

In the USA Dr Thuemmler said the focus is on bringing healthcare technology into the 21st century with a budget of $billions. Policy strategy is about communication integration and electronic health records again providing significant opportunities for European companies to enter into partnerships and collaboration with American companies taking advantage of existing grants and cooperation agreements with the EU.

Standardisation and regulation for healthcare service provision is the key area of focus in Europe. Discussions are also underway about how best to achieve market leadership in healthcare, wellness, nanotechnology and digital libraries. Significant grants are available for research in these fields which are open to companies in all EU member states.

He posed the questions: “Where are the drivers for innovation?”

Dr Thuemmler told his audience of healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs, technology companies, inventors and investors: “I believe one of the central issues is the shift in care models. Currently the centre of the care model is the hospital and the specialist providers of care. We are moving to a distributed patient centred care model where the patient is at the centre of model, not the hospitals and the specialists.”

The drivers for change, he said were demographics, financial constraints, availability of new products and technological progress.

Information Communication Technologies (ICT) is what Dr Thuemmler believes really drives the change in healthcare internationally.

He gave the example of the work being done by the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering in the field of m (mobile) Health, where mobile phone technology is being developed to help manage diseases such as asthma. They predict mHealth could save the NHS £750million a year.

Roma Maguire, a senior research fellow with the Cancer Care Research Team at Dundee University highlighted the ASyMS remote patient monitoring programme they are piloting using the mobile phone.

Conducting a breakout session at the Showcase she explained that patients use their mobile phone to fill out a questionnaire twice daily or if they feel unwell that feeds back their symptoms to a computerised database that will alert medical staff to contact the patient if there is anything untoward.  Within minutes the nurse in the hospital calls the patient if there is a cause for concern.

She confirmed that the reason they had embarked on the project was because of the changing model of care where patients who previously would have spent several days in hospital for treatment are brought in as an outpatient then go home. 

“They have to deal with the toxicities of their treatment and the side effects of their disease often on their own without the help of a healthcare professional in charge of their case. This system empowers patients to deal with some of their own care issues,” Roma said.

Often, she said, patients’ perception of symptoms doesn’t match that of the healthcare professionals and added:”Patent reporting systems are the Gold Standard. They provide the most accurate data you can collect.”

Roma continued: “What we find is that this system of care brings a preventative and anticipatory level of care. There is no more fire fighting, it is picking up trends earlier so if the patient does call you can deal with it at a mild level. If they are severely unwell what we find is that the patient is fitter when they come to hospital because they are not sitting on a situation for a couple of days before doing anything about it.”

The data collected by the system can also predict the most likely symptoms a patient will experience while undergoing treatment allowing the clinician to focus on treating these instead of  giving them “a goodie bag” of medicine  for a wide range of symptoms which is often returned and has to be disposed of unused at significant cost.

Further testing will be carried out and a health economy study undertaken to identify the cost savings involved before adoption by the NHS.

Breakout sessions were also held to discus available funding technology innovation projects, regulation issues that require to be addressed in developing medical devices and a case study tracking a concept through to commercialisation.

Derek Leslie, a director with Independent Living Services attended two breakout sessions, Concept to Commercialisation and Remote Patient Monitoring.

He said afterwards: “Although the first workshop was based on a consumer product we could see a similar life cycle to developing the services we deliver. We could use a lot of the methodology they used in developing a new service. It was very relevant. The relevance to us of the Cancer Care project is around monitoring and alerting. We are looking at a number of pilots and studies ourselves so it was interesting to hear what kind of methodology they used and the barriers to success they experienced. We can take that and learn from it.”

Jenny Cusiter, attending on behalf of  NHS Lothian and the University of Edinburgh participated in the Funding and Remote Patient Monitoring, commenting: “ I found them both very useful and very interactive. It was good to speak to everyone involved and for them to put across their views and opinions. Making contacts will be beneficial and overall I was very impressed.”  

Elaine Gemmell of Scottish Health Innovations Limited said: “Once again this event has underlined the importance of technology in delivering the quality of healthcare we aspire to in Scotland. Care models are changing across the world and Scotland has the drive, innovation and ambition to lead this transformation that will benefit people globally. The event was very successful, attracting the highest number of delegates so far and demonstrating the importance of networking to inspiring innovation and facilitating groundbreaking collaboration.”

The Showcase event is supported by: EDTC (www.edtc.org.uk) NEXXUS (www.nexxusscotland.com), Scottish Health Innovations Ltd (www.shil.co.uk), Stirling University Innovation Park Ltd (www.suip.co.uk); Wellness& Health Innovation (www.wellnesshealthinnovation.org)
 

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