After 10 years in the media industry, including several years at the Times as director of digital products, I made the shift from the private to the public sector.
I did this because of a deeply personal experience, a stressful and scary second pregnancy that caused me to spend six months in and out of hospital.
I was fortunate to be treated by excellent NHS staff who saved my life and that of my premature baby daughter. But, as I observed healthcare from a hospital bed, I became fascinated by how the service struggled to make the most of information and technology, and provide the insight, products and services that are commonplace in other areas of modern life.
Patients want to access their test results, book appointments and view their records in the same quick, convenient digital way we access our bank accounts and do our shopping. Without these facilities, patients have less control and clinicians’ valuable time is used with non-clinical questions, reducing the time they have to spend on care.
Patients also need to be able to understand their conditions; they want to know what is likely to happen to them, and what’s happened before to people in the same situation. During my time in hospital I was surprised that often this insight and the answers to my questions were just not there. I recognised that there was a huge opportunity to improve health, if only information was used in a better, more sophisticated way so healthcare professionals can do what they do best – deliver excellent care to patients.
I came away from my experience extremely grateful to the NHS but also feeling that there was a lot of unnecessary demand that could be alleviated. At a time when the NHS is under real pressure and people living longer than ever before, we need to use information and technology to work more efficiently, help people live healthier lives and provide patients with the intelligent, personalised, high-quality care they deserve.
Now, as the director of digital experience for NHS England, I have the chance to deliver the online products and services that enable patients to access health and care information, advice and treatment simply and conveniently and to allow clinicians to focus on what’s most important. We are creating new solutions that put the information they need to make good decisions at their fingertips and are developing new tools to help them interact with, and make choices about, health and care services. Central to this work is the transformation of the NHS Choices website.
NHS Choices provides comprehensive and trusted advice on health conditions and services and receives more than 1.5 million visits per day. We are upgrading the site to become NHS.UK, which will not just offer more personalised advice and information, but will also enable patients to book appointments and access their personal health records. This will enable us to give patients – especially those with long-term conditions who are cared for by a number of specialists – what we know they want: a single joined-up relationship with the NHS.
This spring we launched the NHS Digital apps library, which includes trusted apps to help people manage and improve their own health. The library will include apps approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, as well as those that can connect to NHS systems and not only utilise their information to provide better, more tailored advice but also enable staff to monitor patients’ health in real time.
We are looking at the solutions and services we’re implementing and appreciate that apps and online services have little value if people can’t access them. That’s why, since January, we’ve implemented free wifi in 1,000 GP surgeries and why, over the next year, we will roll this out to all other surgeries in the country.
Although it was sometimes difficult to navigate the system, and manage my health, I was lucky back in 2015 when I spent my time in hospital. I was treated by brilliant NHS staff who had the right experience and expertise to save my life.
Now I’m fortunate again, because I’m in a position to make positive changes to help ensure that luck does not come in to it, and all patients and clinicians have the technology, services and insight to provide the care needed in the right place, at the right time, every time.
Juliet Bauer, director of digital experience for NHS England, will be speaking at eHealth Week on 3–4 May. The Guardian Healthcare Professionals Network is media partner for the event.
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My experience as a patient revealed how the NHS needed a digital overhaul | Juliet Bauer
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