Public Tech (Part 5): Why chronic sickness is inevitable without the “PILL”

Part 5 of 5 short articles on just some of the many barriers faced by both public sector buyers and technologists when trying to bring inventions to market that can improve lives and save money.

Although I use technology for older people as a reference point, many of the themes I touch upon should have parallels for anyone, on either side of the table in bringing meaningful tech to the masses. For brevity quite complex themes are abbreviated in these articles, but I hope you enjoy them. Take what you want.

The famous, slightly tired, quip about the NHS goes that it has “more pilots than British airways”.

Our National Health Service is a vast, creaking organisation in which adoption of the right kind of innovation could bring enormous benefits for us all.

Maddeningly, a huge number of life-changing technologies stall in the pilot stage, with the lead time for adoption currently standing at about 10 years (or so I have been told numerous times).

This means by the time such inventions are actually deployed they risk being out of date. More likely, most of the ventures that exist to distribute those innovations will have gone out of business.

As I have described in the previous four blogs, often this is down to a combination of risk aversion, a market which is loaded against startups and procurement processes that don’t assess everything that really matters.

Let’s use my own company as an example of just one missed opportunity.

An epidemic of loneliness – creating real costs and damaging real lives

Of all the pressures put on GP surgeries, one of the biggest comes from frequent appointments made by people who are lonely. Lonely people make more visits to see their doctor, often with minor complaints or purely because they crave social interaction.

Like all of us they have an innate need for human contact. A trip to the local surgery is one of the few remaining ways they can fulfill it.

This is not to say that loneliness is not a physical and mental problem, it has impacts comparable with serious diseases and co-morbidities. But surely there are ways we can mitigate it before it begins putting extra pressure on our already stretched public services?

Well, if you will forgive me a little product placement, then I know of just the thing. The services which my own company, Alertacall, provides are founded on giving people the option of regular daily contact with the opportunity to speak to real human beings. It’s tech powered, but customers have the option to talk with a member of our team when they need to (and lots do).

We use digital technology, which can be deployed at scale and relatively inexpensively, to deliver information to people, help them report issues, and it can be used for nudging people into social prescribing activities to reduce isolation. Our services can also be used to prompt people to take medication or order repeat prescriptions.

I have no doubt our services would reduce GP visits and ambulance callouts, while making a significant contribution to helping people avoid illness and injury in the first place. In fact we already have some data to suggest that users have materially lower hospital readmission rates.

The NHS clearly agrees. Several years ago we were delighted to be identified by the NHS Innovation Agency for the North West as an organisation very likely to reduce hospital admissions or readmissions. But even with the support of that excellent team, progress was so slow that we could no longer invest time and effort into it (though are now resuming the process).

Our own example is just one among countless others, where novel ideas have been kicked into the long grass, or failed through a lack of expedient nutrition.

The price of this backlog is people dying when they shouldn’t, living in pain and having a poorer quality of life, while we all pay more for the privilege.

To boldly go …

As a youngster I would always look forward to the time of the evening when I could take a break from my homework to sit down and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Among the many things I loved about this programme was the idea that aboard the Starship Enterprise all of the crew’s needs were essentially met through amazing technology.

Fantasy though this is, it still resonates with me as symbolic of what technology should represent: The harnessing of human creativity to keep us in good health, help us feel happier and live longer (and prosper).

Throughout this series of blogs, I have explored some of the barriers which can stop technology and innovation being put towards their best purpose.

In many cases, these connect back to a fear of the risk of doing the wrong thing when there is so much at stake, no less than people’s welfare or that of the nation as a whole.

I think this is an approach which has things the wrong way around. Far from putting a brake on progress, the enormity of the implications should have the opposite effect.

If there is any sphere in which we have an obligation to do everything we can to find improved ways to make a positive difference, then it must be the health and wellbeing of ourselves, our families and society.

So let’s stop bumping along in the slow lane, let’s take the PILL, engage warp speed and start embracing technology to achieve the best outcomes possible. The time to begin is now.

 

For more articles in this series on Public Sector Technology Adoption see

Public Tech (Part 1): Why innovation & agetech adoption is so slow

Public Tech (Part 2): 5 x Critical factors to consider when commissioning innovation

Public Tech (Part 3): The three funding truths – that block innovation

Public Tech (Part 4): Treating our tech adoption sickness with a “PILL”

Public Tech (Part 5): Why chronic sickness is inevitable without “The PILL”