Our CEO, Jon Pickering, was recently invited to take part in Business Cloud’s HealthTech roundtable, in Manchester. And what a great discussion it was to be a part of!
Jon was joined by 10 other industry professionals, and the topic on everyone’s lips was technology — specifically, how it could transform healthcare, and what needs to happen to get the sector where it needs to be.
If you missed Business Cloud’s official write-up, you can catch it here. In this blog, however, Jon summarises his key contributions and shares some additional thoughts too…
1. Greater consistency across healthcare
If mandated objectives are given to integrated care systems (ICS) and NHS trusts, this would ensure everyone understood what was required to be able to achieve a consistent level of digital maturity across the system. And this is vital.
2. The ‘tools for the job’ already exist
While the NHS undoubtedly has a long way to go on its digital transformation journey, it should be comforting to know that the technologies to help it get there are available — now. Problems and inefficiencies can be ironed out. But it’s vital that Trusts also focus on how to implement and adopt these technologies, as well as recognise the changes to processes and ways of working — only then can the sector truly digitally transform.
3. Building the business case
While the tools exist, in order to access them, there’s some work to be done in helping NHS Trusts and private clinics build business cases which will help them access the funding needed for large-scale digital projects. It is a very difficult market to sell into — due to regulation, Information Governance (IG), and procurement frameworks/tenders. As a result, quality and finance cases are critical to unlocking funding and investment.
4. Time for a different approach
The bottom line is that it is difficult for Trusts and their CIOs to make the right technology choices without any centralised, national strategy. It is also tricky to see how the NHS as a whole can reinvent itself without a different approach at a strategic level – could NHS England be the vehicle for positive change? Perhaps if we can demonstrate with a regional flagship reference with an ICS how this can be done, and information shared across Trusts, thinking may then change nationally…
5. More needs to be done
Ultimately, there needs to be more action taken to transform working practices in hospitals. Turning paper records into usable data — for example — is massive, and it can have such a positive impact on the quality of care, patient outcomes, and the overall experience for both patients and staff. Any strategy needs to be holistic though, spanning people, process, and technology — each one complements and facilitates the other, they should never work in silos.
If you’d like to find out more about IMMJ Systems’ EDMS solution — MediViewer — please get in touch. Don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more updates, too!
