Joop Tanis, director of medtech consulting and business development, Health Enterprise East, explains how new technologies can make the ‘new normal’ smarter.
There can be no doubt that over the last six months the NHS has been challenged like never before. It is also true that it has responded admirably and has shown it can adapt with great speed and agility in re-purposing its facilities and staff to deal with this acute crisis. But what lies ahead over the next months, even years, may prove yet more challenging. The question is: how can we take this spirit of change and innovation into the future?
Apart from the considerable financial cost, re-organising healthcare services to provide urgent COVID-19 related care has had an immediate impact on routine services at a scale we have never seen before. Almost every service has been affected: elective surgery has been cancelled, as have many other non-COVID related services such as non-acute diagnostics, treatments and out-patient services.
As a result, apparent waiting lists have dropped, but in the background, demand is being held back by primary care and by patients choosing against accessing the NHS right now. Pressures are building up that will have to be dealt with, particularly now as we slowly begin to restart services – in itself presenting a whole new set of challenges.
The waiting lists will be longer, alongside capacity being significantly reduced due to the way we practically provide services having had to change to make sure patients and staff are safe. On top of this, sadly, some patients may present with a disease that is more advanced and will be more difficult to treat. Finally, ‘winter pressures’ are upon us, and this will put further strain on the system beyond what we have experienced in previous years.
A silver lining
If the above presents a rather gloomy picture, there is also a real opportunity to carry much of the innovative thinking we have seen and heard about into the future.
Over the past decades, we have seen a real transformation in the way we manage our daily lives. From shopping to banking and travel, the way we consume these services is radically different to only ten or twenty years ago. Healthcare on the other hand, has arguably not seen the same transformation.
Both healthcare providers and consumers have been part of the reason for lack of change but forced to adapt in recent months, the potential long-term benefits have been realised. Many patients have even been managing their condition themselves, using methods and technologies that already existed, but were not adopted widely.
Now we see a real sense amongst clinicians and patients that many new ways of working are worth holding on to – for instance video consultations have dramatically increased appointment attendance. While in the past capacity has been the major struggle, healthcare providers and staff have proven that they can adopt radical and innovative changes in operational delivery, in hospital, GP and community care.
The key is seizing the window of opportunity before we inadvertently slip back into old practices, the comfort zone. We have seen that necessity is the mother of invention: there was a belief that the NHS was under too many pressures to stop, think, evaluate and change direction, but that’s exactly what it has been doing. Meanwhile, the new consumer attitudes will also help to drive forward change, with an expectation for the services the NHS can provide and not simply taking what is offered.
Industry now needs to play its part to help the NHS maintain the momentum of innovation into the next phase. Supporting it to find the right methods to utilise the significant investment in research and development of innovative technologies which has seen many new solutions created.
Until now adoption into clinical practice has remained slow, but we have seen that, in many cases, we can do things differently, and crucially, more efficiently. The positive outcome of the crisis can be that we have embraced this, transforming our health services permanently, and for the better.
