eHealth

Thursday October 16th 2008, Victoria Park Plaza - London, 09:00 - 16:05

e-health: Transforming Health and Social Care Services Using Assistive and Wireless Technologies

"There are 15 million people in England with long-term conditions ranging from asthma to heart disease. Many are already taking more active roles in their own care - for example, by using new technologies that allow remote monitoring of their condition via the internet or on the telephone."

Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP speech on NHS screening plans, 7 January 2008

Overview

The ageing population profile of the UK has serious financial implications for the future funding, service quality and organisation of the NHS. But could ehealth and assistive technologies (telecare, telehealth and telemedicine) transform social and healthcare services by meeting users’, patients’ and clinicians’ expectations of quality care while providing a sustainable, financial solution for local authorities and the NHS?

According to estimates from the 2001 census, 11m people out of a population of 59m were of pension age or over. Currently, two-thirds of UK residents aged 75 and over have at least one long-term condition - asthma, diabetes or arthritis - requiring acute, hospital-based care, or intermediate social care, or outpatient hospital services. With the population trend set to continue and the probability of having a long-term condition increasing with age, demographic changes pose very serious challenges for the NHS.

In response to this and other challenges, from 2002-2007, the government invested unprecedented sums of money in the NHS to improve service quality and to transform the design and delivery of healthcare in the UK. Over this period, the government doubled its investment in NHS; spending on the NHS in England reached £90 billion in 2007 and this figure is estimated to rise to almost £110 billion by 2010. The gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to health care spending increased from just over 7%in 2002 to just under 9.5% in 2006, which is close to the European Union average

The Wanless Report published in 2002, Securing our future health: taking a long-term view, highlighted the need to further reform the NHS so that the level of investment required to meet the high quality healthcare needs and expectations of an ageing population could be managed more effectively over the next 20 years.

The need to deliver value for money is a key concern for the government. Since 2008 however, this concern has assumed top priority status as spending on the NHS has fallen to 4.4% of GDP. Consequently, the government has renewed its interest in ehealth and assistive technologies as it promotes early diagnosis and reorganises the NHS around a patient-centred, integrated approach to the provision of health and social care in the community.

Agenda

09:00	Registration and Coffee
09:50	Chair’s Welcome Address Margaret Parton, Chief Executive, NHS National Technology Adoption Centre
09:55	Telecare: messages from policy and practice The drivers for telecare What is telecare? Government activity in telecare The supply chain What have we learnt Private sector activity Dr Richard Curry, Consultant, Imperial College London
10:15	NHS Connecting for Health: Integrated services enabled by telehealth technologies Delivering health policy and patient centric service: responding to demographic change using technology Shifting care: enabling user control and promoting self-care and user choice Effective service provision: the need for standards Safer care: sharing critical information Michael Dillon, NHS CFH Assistive Technology Programme, NHS CFH Technology Office, NHS Connecting for Health
10:50	Developing Connected Health and Social Care - the Northern Ireland experience Policy and drivers for change Northern Ireland context From pilot to scale application Lessons learnt Developing a strategy for connected health and care Eddie Ritson, Programme Director for Strategy Development, European Centre for Connected Health
11:10	Coffee Break and Networking
11:30	Supporting People to Live Independently at Home through the use of Assistive Technology Population and healthy equality profile The background to the use of telecare and telehealth in Kent Lessons learned Case-study examples Moving forward with the Whole Systems Demonstrator (WSD) Measuring success and evaluation Jeremy Blackman, WSD Programme Manager, Service Development and Projects Manager, Kent County Council
11:50	ehealth: in Chronic Diseases - a Mobile Phone Solution for Clinical Effectiveness, Equity of Provision and Affordability, and Don't Forget the Clinicians An illustration of using the mobile phone as the telemonitoring solution for chronic diseases: diabetes, COPD etc Provides real-time window in to disease for both patient and carer: encourages patients in to self-care mode Implementation: a problem: healthcare professionals, doctors/nurses, involvement essential Innovation needs adequate resource: NOT an investment to guarantee failure! Professor Ram Dhillon, Consultant Surgeon, Northwick Park Hospital, Harrow Hon Professor, Middlesex University, London
12:10	Questions and Answers Session
13:00	Lunch and Networking
14:05	The Swindon Experience: Implementing a Successful Telehealth Pilot Results and benefits Merger with Homeline Future developments Telehealth Project Manager, Swindon Primary Care Trust
14:20	Shifting care from hospital to home: the challenges of implementing a mainstream remote care service How best to care for older people, whilst limiting the demand for expensive hospital and nursing home beds? One solution is technologies that support care remotely The UK situation: the government plans to introduce remote care into around 180,000 homes in the UK during 2006 - 2011 Two years into the programme, what progress has been made and its implications for the UK and other governments? The findings: the first stage of a qualitative, longitudinal five year study of a mainstream service With the use of 5 case studies we discuss how remote care services can be successfully and sustainably integrated into services that shift care out of the hospital and into the home Cultural and organisational divides that exist between different service providers and the bridging of these gaps: robust evaluation senior level leadership supporting a culture of innovation consistent and active marketing of stakeholders positioning remote care as ‘normal business’ from inception Dr Jane Hendy, Research Fellow, Imperial College London
14:45	Empowering Mr Green with ICT Tools The patient journey Exploiting the technology Empowering the patient Empowering the health professional Making the system work more effectively Dr Malcolm Clarke, Senior Lecturer, Telemedicine, Brunel University
15:05	Telecare and telehealth: implementation opportunities and challenges Current and future policy in health, housing and social care impacting on implementation Summary of recent survey information from 150 local authorities and their partners implementing services Building the evidence base for telecare and telehealth Opportunities and challenges for local commissioners and service providers Mike Clark, Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP)
15:25	Questions and Answers Session
16:05	Chair's Summary and Conclusions
16:10	Close

Audience

The audience will be comprised of local authorities, health professionals, strategic health authorities, ICT delivery officials, Information Technology specialists, PCT's, central government departments & bodies, clinical specialists, primary care workers academia, lifestyle clinicians and professionals, schools, foundation trusts, trade unions, private, legal & voluntary sectors.