The NHS is designing mechanisms to involve the patient more actively in caring for their well-being through digital platforms in which they’ll play a central role.
Patients affiliated with the NHS (National Health Service) can record their concerns about their medical care through a new digital service (app and web) accessible via a smartphone. Under the new patient safety strategy, they may send information anonymously if they’re not satisfied with their treatment or if they believe that some medication was not appropriate for their recovery, for example.
This tool empowers the patient not only to report, but also to better control their health status from their smartphone or tablets. Patients and their families, as well as health personnel, may send data to the platform, and monitor their progress during the course of an illness, or simply have useful information literally in the palm of their hand in case of a medical emergency or an unforeseen event.
The data collected will be analyzed to provide information on patient safety and identify areas for improvement. This includes both service improvements and access to medical records that allow the design of algorithms that facilitate the timely detection of risks, in order to prevent future illnesses.
Thus, Digital Health acquires a leading role by not only intervening in emergencies, but also by participating in the most important part of medicine: prevention.
The Department of Health and Social Assistance (DHSC) expects that the registration of such information will allow the national patient safety team to identify the risks of serious harm and allow health care providers to exchange best practices, helping to prevent the same areas of opportunity from repeating all over the world.
According to Caroline Dinenage, Minister of Health of the United Kingdom, “patient safety is key to our long-term plan for the NHS and this approach will provide the NHS with a new perspective on how services and care can be improved, to make the NHS the safest health care system in the world. ".
Sarah Scobie, deputy director of research at Nuffield Trust, said the new documentation system would be critical to allow the NHS to record patient data from new sources, such as portable devices and applications, that allow the patient to be informed: "This could provide the opportunity to understand safety and risk in a much wider range of care settings, even at home. "
It’s important to keep track of the implementations carried out in other countries in order to evaluate the technologies and their possible local implementation. This reduces the time of research and analysis so you can reach developments that offer the best results from the early stages.
