Paul Burstow, minister of state for care services, used a keynote speech at the second international congress on telehealth and telecare yesterday to lambast the "confused, disjointed, fragmented mess" of today's health and social care system.
"Up until now, each part has organised itself around its own needs. Hospitals around what a hospital needs. GP practices around what GPs need. Social care providers around what they need," he told the conference at the King's Fund in London.
By contrast telehealth and telecare systems allow services to be integrated with the person in the middle and working out.
Burstow said that the headline findings from a government-funded controlled clinical trial, the Whole System Demonstrator, are "staggering". These include:
- A 20% fall in emergency admissions
- 15% fewer visits to A&E
- 14% fewer elective admissions
- 14% fewer bed days
- And an 8% reduction in tariff costs
He also highlighted as "quite unexpected and truly extraordinary" a 45% difference in mortality rates between individuals using telehealth and those in the control group. Full findings of the trial are to be published in the British Medical Journal, he revealed.
Burstow also stressed the potential of new technology to save money. "By keeping people out of hospital, by reducing the time they're there when they have to be and by being far more targeted and efficient with the use of NHS resources, we estimate the widespread use of telecare and telehealth could save the NHS up to £1.2 billion over five years."
However he said no top-down targets would be set for telecare use. "We need local providers and local commissioners to look at the needs of their communities and make decisions based on the clinical and social needs of their patients." The government's role would be merely to remove barriers.
Among obstacles he noted "a general lack of interoperability and confusion over incentives" as well as "substantial initial costs". He said the government is looking at innovative ways that providers and commissioners can pay for telehealth and telecare, such as through mobile phone-style contracts.
He gave short shrift to claims that remote monitoring and care would endanger privacy. "It's been said that, whatever the concerns about security and privacy, nobody ever died because someone had seen their data. On the contrary, many have died because they hadn't."
More details will appear in the government's long-awaited Information Strategy, which will be published "soon".
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Michael Cross
Quelle/Source: UKauthorITy, 08.03.2012
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