Conference call: King’s Fund event on long term conditions
Microsoft is supporting a conference by the King’s Fund think-tank that will explore how technology can be used to improve care for people living with long term conditions. Lyn Whitfield had a look at the agenda.
For the past seven years, the NHS has received unprecedented annual increases in its funding. Now they are coming to an end.
As the NHS Confederation pointed out in a paper launched to mark the start of its annual conference in June, the health service will need to plan for limited or zero growth from 2010-11, when its current settlement with the Treasury runs out.
And by the time that increased demand and rising costs are factored in, it is going to need to find substantial savings. The NHS Confederation estimated that these might be as high as £15 billion over five years. The big debate now is where the money is going to come from.
On Radio 4’s Today programme, King’s Fund chief economist John Appleby said two ideas that were gaining ground were improving quality (to reduce errors and infections) and shifting attention from big hospitals (to keeping people fit and delivering treatment locally).
Time for new ideas
Neither of these are new ideas. It is well known, for example, that many long-term conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and chronic wheezing are preventable, if people make good lifestyle choices.
It is also well-known that many of the 15.4 million people in England who live with long-term conditions do not have them well managed and that they can end up making unnecessary trips to clinics and hospitals as a result.
The government has tried to take action on both fronts in a series of national service frameworks and white papers.
Most recently, Lord Darzi’s Next Stage Review of the NHS focused on the need for commissioners to map the needs of local communities and target information messages for them.
It also focused on the need for health, social and care services to work together, to make sure patients have “care plans” in place, and for individuals to be better informed about the choices open to them.
The Your Health, Your Way section of the NHS Choices website was subsequently developed to give individuals more information about this agenda and to encourage them to “self-care.”
Yet this is not an easy agenda to deliver. A King’s Fund conference, supported by Microsoft and the NHS Direct telephone advice line, will explore some of the practical difficulties, such as how to commission effectively, overcome the barriers to joint working, and engage staff and patients.
The event, at Microsoft’s London headquarters on 9 July, will also explore how technology can help, by generating information, getting it out to the people who need it, and allowing some of the care that is currently delivered in clinics and hospitals to be carried out in the community.
Time to learn what works
Speakers at the event include Professor James Barlow, chair in technology and innovation management at Imperial College, London, and Wendy Hardicker, assistant director of out of hospital care for NHS Norfolk.
In less formal workshops and case study sessions, John Coulthard, Microsoft UK’s director of health and life sciences, will talk about the work the company has been doing with the Tribal consultancy to develop its Dynamics software suite for stakeholder and patient engagement.
And Dr Diane Gray, deputy director of public health at NHS Milton Keynes, will be talking about the work it has been doing with the Microsoft-owned Razorfish agency to develop new ways of helping people with diabetes to manage their condition.
She will also talk about the work the primary care trust is doing with the iwantgreatcare website to let patients feedback their experiences of GP and primary care.
“It’s a challenging agenda, but we’re starting to see policies and technology coming to fruition,” said Mark Treleaven, Microsoft UK’s healthcare strategic marketing manager. “And this is not a ‘nice to have’ anymore.
“Preventing ill health and improving the management of long-term conditions is going to be fundamental to the NHS in the future if it is to cope with an ageing population in much harder economic times.”