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Smart technology must be at the heart of any GPefficiency driveBy: Dr Mohammad Al­Ubaydli, founder and CEO Patients Know Best Published: Tuesday, October 7, 2014 ­ 16:01 GMT

If GP surgeries are to open twelve hours a day, seven days a week, digital healthcareinnovation must be embraced by the whole of the NHS to ease the strain on ouralready over-worked GPs.

GPs have long been at the forefront of digital in the NHS. The first GP in the UK to use anelectronic medical records system was also the first GP in the world to do so – back in 1975. NHSGP spending is 6­8% of the government’s healthcare budget, but GPs maintain digital records on100% of their patients – more than any other NHS organisation. These records form thebackbone of the NHS – GPs are the ones who know the patients and they’re the ones whoeveryone else relies upon.

Today, the challenge is for GPs to work efficiently with all the other institutions helping NHSpatients. Patients are treated or cared for by an ever­increasing range of healthcare providers,including hospitals, local councils, third sector or private sector providers, and of course thepatient themselves. Patients with long­term conditions can self­assess and self­manage, they areproviders of information and care. The only way to work with all of them is using innovativetechnologies and services. However, the whole of the NHS must embrace these new innovationsif GPs are to deliver the care patients deserve – and politicians expect.

For example, it’s now easier than ever for GPs to collect clinically accurate data from the patientwhilst the patient is at home – avoiding a visit to the surgery. Apps like uMotif enable doctors tocollect routine patient data on a range of long­term conditions like Diabetes, Hypertension andAsthma. Where once, patients with Parkinson’s Disease would have to be examined in person toassess their response to medications, tapping the screen on a phone can provide theassessments more frequently and more conveniently. This is why Cure Parkinson’s highlightedUMotif’s smartphone app.

Technology can keep the patient at home rather than needing to visit A&E. The South East CoastAmbulance Service (Secamb) is pioneering a new system which gives their own ambulancecrews access to a patient’s GP care plan before they reach the scene of an emergency. Armedwith the right information – which might give details of the patient’s condition and what the normalprotocols for treatment are – ambulance staff are better equipped to treat a patient at the scene ofan emergency.

When this happens, the patient wins as they receive more immediate care and might not need tobe admitted to A&E. The GP wins because they don’t need to be consulted and called into thehospital, and the NHS wins because it saves huge costs involved with unplanned A&Eadmissions. Secamb have reduced trips by ambulance to A&E from 67% to just 40% of incidentsthat start as a home visit.

Lastly, new innovative services are making sure that patients are learning how to look afterthemselves better. Clinicians and GPs are experts in medicine – not teachers of behaviourchange. But most NHS spending goes to treating patients with long term conditions – those mostat need of making a change to their behaviour: diet, exercise, taking the right pills, stopping takingharmful substances.

This is why GPs now “prescribe” Know Your Own Health (KYOH) to patients alongside a courseof drug treatments. A KYOH health coach develops a care plan with (that's "with" not "for") thepatient and helps them stick to the plan. The platform also offers online and offline, peer­to­peersupport around mutual goals in local communities. Often, people manage their condition bylearning from others and feeling accountable to a group of their peers who share the same goal. Itis services like this which not only help the patient manage their condition, but ensure that routinevisits to the GP are cut and emergency visits to A&E are minimised.

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So for me, it’s not a case of asking already hard working GPs to work even longer, it’s a case oflooking at how the whole of the NHS can work smarter – using the latest innovations in healthcarethat are already available. Patients deserve it, GPs deserve it and we will all benefit as a result.

Dr Mohammad Al­Ubaydli is founder and CEO of Patients Know Best. Dr Al­Ubaydli trainedas a physician at the University of Cambridge and is the author of seven books on IT andhealthcare. He is an honorary senior research associate at UCL medical school for hisresearch on patient­controlled medical records and in 2012, was elected an Ashoka Fellowas a social entrepreneur for the contributions he has made to patient care.

Links: Know Your Own Health (http://kyoh.org/) ; Cure Parkinson’s(http://www.cureparkinsons.org.uk/Default.aspx); South East Coast Ambulance Service (Secamb)(http://www.secamb.nhs.uk/); uMotif (https://www.umotif.com/);

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