Government says its time to roll out telecare

London, UK/ Implementations]

The government has announced that it will facilitate the rollout of telecare to improve the healthcare of the three million people identified with long-term conditions. After years of conducting small trials and the larger-scale Whole Systems Demonstrator (WSD) trials of the technology, the government has now recognised that it is time to roll out telecare on a national level, even before the full results have been published.

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The WSD programme is the largest randomised control trial of telehealth and telecare in the world, involving over 6000 patients with long-term conditions at three sites, in Newham, Kent and Cornwall. The results so far show that telehealth can lead to a 45% reduction in mortality rates, 15% reduction in A&E visits, 20% reduction in emergency admissions, 14% reduction in elective admissions, a 14% reduction in bed days and an 8% reduction in tariff costs.

As part of a wide ranging series of policy announcements in the last week supporting technology adoption in the NHS and life sciences research, development and commercialisation, the government announced the 3 Million Lives campaign. The aim of the campaign is to encourage rollout of telecare devices to patients who could benefit from being able to monitor their conditions in the home with medical devices and transmit the data to clinicians so that they can monitor their patients remotely.

The campaign will not actually provide the systems but will give “national leadership, strategic direction, and advice to NHS and social care organisations; with support from industry who would be responsible for creating the market and working with local organisations to deliver the change.” The details of the campaign are still being worked out.

Prime Minister David Cameron in a speech at the FT Global Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Conference, commenting on the initiatives to support life sciences and medicine, said, “Just look at our approach to telehealth – telemedicine – getting new technology into patients′ homes so they can be monitored remotely. We′ve done a trial, it′s been a huge success and now we′re on a drive to roll this out nationwide with an aim to improve three million lives over the next five years with this technology.

“Now this will make an extraordinary difference to people. Diabetics will be taking their blood sugar levels at home and having them checked remotely by a nurse; heart disease patients will have their blood pressure and pulse rates checked without leaving their home at all. This is dignity and convenience and independence for millions of people. And it′s not just a good healthcare story; it′s going to put us miles ahead of other countries commercially too as part of our plan to make our NHS a driver of innovation in UK life sciences.

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