The 10 Year Health Plan to Make the NHS Fit for the Future – Contribution of the DigiAge Project to the “biggest ever conversation about the future of the NHS”
Monday 2nd December was the deadline for the Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) first public inquiry into the future of the NHS since Labour came into power. Open to members of the public and organisations alike, the inquiry provided ‘an early opportunity to share your insights as we begin an extensive programme of engagement to develop the 10-Year Health Plan.’
In a previous blog post published on this site, I considered how discussions of the future of healthcare today are suffused by references to ‘digital transformations’ and ‘digital transitions’, where digital technology is looked to as the silver bullet to the global ‘crisis of care’ and the challenges posed by ‘ageing populations’. Concerning the latter, the ‘ageing-and-innovation discourse’, as Neven and Peine (2017: 1) call it, is widely ‘enacted by policy makers, scientists and industry practitioners to frame the relationship between ageing, the future and technology (Neven and Peine (2017: 1). It comes as no surprise that in this public inquiry, which is concerned with overcoming the serious problems besetting the NHS, digital technology stood centre stage too.
We welcomed this opportunity offered by the DHSC to share findings from the research conducted as part of the DigiAge project. The DHSCs inquiry focused on the three big ‘shifts’ that, apparently, ‘doctors, nurses, patient charities, academics and politicians from all parties broadly agree are necessary to improve health and care services in England’. These are:
- Shift 1: moving more care from hospitals to communities
- Shift 2: making better use of technology in health and care
- Shift 3: focussing on preventing sickness, not just treating it
The policy recommendations we submitted were informed by findings from forty semi-structured interviews conducted with older adults (65+) living in north Lancashire between 2023 and 2024 about their views and experiences of digital technology and digitalisation; a workshop held with nine older adults in Lancaster on digital futures in October 2024; and thirteen in-depth interviews with key institutional stakeholders in 2024 about their perceptions of digital technology and its role in health and social care (these included representatives from the care home sector, the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board, policymakers, think tanks, civic societies, research institutions, and tech developers). Among our recommendations were that:
- Alternatives to “digital” need to be made available to all NHS users. Not everyone can or desires to “go digital”. People should not face a choice between either digitally adapting or being digitally excluded.
- Digital and offline provisions need to be equal, and any Service Agreement put in place must ensure that people have equitable access to all services and receive the same prompt response to avoid discrimination.
- Inclusivity for online/phone consultations is essential, and support must be mad available to those who sight or hearing impairments or other needs.
- Cybersecurity, data protection measures and safe data storage needs to be a top Government priority. This will not only protect patients, but also increase their trust in digitisation.
- Developing and embedding seamless, robust and interoperable communication systems between GP surgeries, hospitals, and social care providers will create time savings (e.g. by avoiding the need for patients to repeat their history numerous times as they move through the system), reduce errors, speed up treatment, and improve care.
- Closing the digital skills gap is essential for the digital transformation of the NHS. Funding and training opportunities – both for professionals and members of the public, including older adults, must be made available.
- How care at home is funded is problematic as it leaves no money in the system for tech development. Changing this could improve efficiencies here and enable carers to spend more time with patients.
- Transferring care from hospitals to communities could benefit from a nationwide, robust and systematic approach to remote monitoring and virtual wards. The latter must be developed with patients/users to ensure that they are person-centred, meet people’s needs, and don’t exceed their technical abilities.
- Integrating telehealth and telecare services across the Integrated Care Board could be beneficial.
- The Government must take steps to ensure that digital devices and apps developed in the private sector to assist with health, independent living, and ageing at home are properly tested, meet high-quality standards, and are well regulated to protect the public.
The DigiAge project aims to catalyse positive transformation towards a digital society that delivers equitable benefits to individuals across the age spectrum.
We hope these recommendations, submitted to the DHSC’s NHS inquiry, will help achieve this.
Reference:
Neven L and Peine A (2017) From Triple Win to Triple Sin: How a Problematic Future Discourse is Shaping the Way People Age with Technology. Societies 7 26 pp 1-11.