Disclaimer

The views/comments/contents posted on this blog are based upon my own interpretation or opinion on a given topic and are not necessarily the view of any other party or employer of mine either currently or historically.

The blog is intended to stimulate discussion and gain opinion on trends in the sector I enjoy working in.

Wednesday 2 September 2015

Healthcare Innovation Expo Manchester highlights

My reflections on Day 1 #Expo15NHS, a really interesting and well attended NHS focused conference.

Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt, Health Minister reiterated and further expanded upon the vision of a paperless NHS by 2018. New expectations for patients and care providers to be able to not only visualise their full record (rather than just a summary) but also contribute to the record were set.  It is anticipated that the new interoperability road map documentation to be published tomorrow by NHS England will provide tools and guidance on how this might be achieved.  Many of the recommendations are expected to be based around the vanguard projects that have been initiated and are providing valuable insight to how interoperability and a regional health community might work. 

It is largely expected that health apps based around given diseases or care pathways will evolve. Thus allowing patients to maintain their health in the community setting but with clinical oversight and technical algorithms essentially providing a safe guard to detect and facilitate actioning of a deteriorating condition proactively rather than reactively. This proactive approach lends itself to community based care being provided by such professionals as pharmacists, GP's, community workers etc which should be better for the patient and cheaper to provide.   The ability to provide this care by such professionals will be possible as a consequence of being able to access the record universally.  Intelligence in the platform is expected to not only facilitate interoperability but also analyse and action data.  An example in a social care setting is  a person attending multiple times to various health providers for injuries which individually would not cause concern but when considered collectively might suggest an underlying domestic abuse problem. 

Access to such records will be facilitated by open APIs which also received a lot of coverage at this event and appears to be the defacto standard for interoperability going forward.  Users should be able to access the full record from the native application that they are using via the APIs as part of a connected interoperability community.  So a pharmacist can use the pharmacy system for example to access the record.  

Discovery of record content in an aggregated manner will be a challenge so NHS England are looking into a national index type solution. Where regional solutions evolve it is anticipated that these will be incorporated into a national solution. 

Open Source is also something that is gaining traction.  Coding for health invited vendors to publish their APIs to the platform to enable developers to code against their APIs.  It will be interesting to see if vendors take up this invitation.  

Clinical Digital Maturity Index (CDMI) scores are also likely to be a measured and rewarded KPI much like CQUINS that exist today.  In addition the associated outcomes linked to the CDMI scores will be measured to ensure the investment is delivering as expected.

All in all a very well attended event with plenty of energy and thought leadership from the very top that seems to resonate with many of the stakeholders attending. 

It will be interesting to see how quickly and comprehensively this vision is turned into a reality.