Patient capital
Upgrading the NHS in a consumerised health culture
This week, the government will set out a 10-year plan for the future of healthcare in the UK.
One of the three “shifts” at the core of this new plan will be going from analogue to digital. That is certainly the most relevant aspect for the purposes of this newsletter, though it is worth noting its close relationship to the other two tenets: hospital to communities and sickness to prevention.
That last one, a shift to prevention, is an area where we have already seen the healthtech sector excel. On-demand testing kits have become big business, offering everything from bowel cancer screenings to predicting the gender of foetuses. The market for wellness apps and wearables is booming. Those with cash to do so are opting into preventative measures such as the health scans offered by Daniel Ek’s Neko, eager to be proactive instead of reactive.
As Dr Vin Diwakar, clinical transformation director at NHS England, said today: “We’re seeing the impact improvements to technology are having on our everyday lives on everything from smartwatches to fitness trackers – and we want to make sure NHS patients can benefit from the latest medical technology and innovations as well.”
He was commenting as part of an announcement that the government will introduce ‘innovator passports’ to help innovative tech roll out faster across the health service. This is one of a number of tidbits that have been released ahead of the full plan, indicating the direction of travel: more and better technology, a wider breadth of options for patients. But I do wonder if policymakers and healthcare leaders are cognisant of quite how fast the consumer approach to health management is changing.
At an event hosted at the offices of AlbionVC last week, I heard from investors Dr Molly Gilmartin and Dr Andrew Elder that consumers are increasingly engaged in their health journeys and, as such, are willing to spend money to get them right. Patients are deploying capital on the solutions they think will most help them.
This can mean people paying directly from their own pocket, but can also follow a ‘B2C2B’ model, in which adoption is led by individuals rather than dictated from above. In the case of health, that might mean patients pushing to use particular apps, treatments or tools so that their employer, insurer or provider ends up footing the bill.
I don’t know that policymakers and healthcare leaders have yet recognised the scale this consumerisation of health could reach.
At the Labour Digital Summer Conference on Monday, I chaired a roundtable of representatives from healthtech companies, research institutions, think tanks and parliament.
One reason identified during that session for this growing consumerisation was that the tech sector’s relentless focus on customers means it often has the upper hand when it comes to knowing what people want. Another is that patients are becoming more empowered with knowledge every day – WebMD is old news, now patients are being advised by Dr ChatGPT.
Some will balk at the idea of the NHS as an organisation that needs to serve the whims of customers. But there is certainly recognition that patients are not being well-served by the current state of its digital offering. Whether by working with healthtech providers or acting like them, the health service can learn a thing or two from the customer-obsessed approach of tech startups.
As I wrote back in March, the NHS is perhaps the most challenging but also the most rewarding stage on which to demonstrate the benefits of digital technology. Get the health service right and this will show that even the most complex and crucial of public services can be made better with the right tools.
Teatime scroll Each week I share links to writings, events, tweets and other conversation-starters. If you have something you think should be in here, feel free to email or DM me.
Like many other people, I read Sam Dumitriu’s very persuasive argument for allowing more air conditioning while sweating in the heat earlier this week – a situation that I suspect boosted how compelling I found it.
This morning, I went to the new Synthesia headquarters in the so-called Knowledge Quarter. The company has 500 employees currently and is hiring. “Enjoy the new office,” co-founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli told staff. “And let’s make sure that, in a few years, we have the entire building.”
Charles Yang has put together this helpful overview of what the UK has been doing with regards to investing in AI for science over the past few months. While you may have seen many of the announcements individually, there is something satisfying about seeing them all together. “Much of this flurry of activity is downstream of a few technical, motivated, young people in government who are tasked with working on hard AI problems,” he writes.
Avion Gray, co-founder of London-based wealth platform Belong, spoke to Jennifer Sieg for Digital Frontier about the idea of risk and the opportunity she spotted in the UK’s underutilised savings.
Pinewood Studios has submitted plans to build a data centre on its land, as well as a nature reserve, community garden and other features.