by Sharon Ann Holgate
E&T
November 8 2010 online, and in the Nov 2010 print edition
As the NHS faces a funding gap of £6 bn a year by 2015, E&T looks at the new technologies for better and less costly medical treatment of the UK’s increasingly infirm and ageing population.
If we’re honest, going to the doctor is up there with having teeth filled, completing our tax return, and other tasks that we know we must do, but would rather not. So it will probably be a relief to learn that emerging technologies could spell an end to at least some hospital and GP appointments, of which there are about 300 million in the UK each year (and 40 per cent of those, according to some sources, are unnecessary) while at the same time potentially cutting waiting lists and saving healthcare services money.
One evolving area is software that can carry out online patient interviewing prior to a visit to the GP. ‘Computer-patient interviewing will develop over the next few years, and should make consultations more efficient,’ says Ray Jones, Professor of Health Informatics at Plymouth University. ‘If the interview makes it clear what is needed, the GP might not need to see the patient at all, or might be able to carry out the consultation via telephone or Skype. Also a lot of research shows patients are happier revealing embarrassing things to a computer than to their GP.’