A recent HSJ article reporting on Lord Prior’s comments on the ‘Five Year Forward View’ acknowledged that according to the Commonwealth Fund the NHS was recently ranked the safest and most efficient healthcare system in the world. It is certainly great to see some positive news about the NHS for a change. It is all too easy to focus on the bad news stories but this really is a testament to staff and the great work they do day in and day out for the vast majority of people who come into contact with the NHS. However that isn’t to say everything is perfect – we all know it isn’t and the NHS must adapt to survive. Lord Prior goes on to say that there is huge potential to do things better in the NHS – and that is crucial if we are to achieve the care system envisaged in the Five Year Forward View.

One of the ways Lord Prior refers to is the need to shift care from acute settings to out-of-hospital settings, reversing a trend we have witnessed since the early 2000s – of policy decisions driving activity and resources into acute providers, rather than primary and community care. It entails changing the way care is delivered, ensuring we develop a more integrated, place-based system.

In order to enable this we need to provide mobility solutions that enable staff to do their jobs more effectively whilst mobile in the community, whether online within range of a signal or offline when not. Neither is it sufficient to provide mobile workers with their legacy desktop applications running on laptops or in windows on a tablet device – that is not true mobility. What is required are truly mobile apps designed to work on gesture driven devices that make life easier for the frontline staff and better for patients. At Isosec we think we have part of the solution and we look forward to working with colleagues in the NHS to make the five year forward view a reality.

“There is broad consensus on what [the] future needs to be. It is a future that dissolves the classic divide, set almost in stone since 1948, between family doctors and hospitals, between physical and mental health, between health and social care, between prevention and treatment. One that no longer sees expertise locked into often outdated buildings, with services fragmented, patients having to visit multiple professionals for multiple appointments, endlessly repeating their details because they use separate paper records.”

“One organised to support people with multiple health conditions, not just single diseases. A future that sees far more care delivered locally but with some services in specialist centres where that clearly produces better results.”

– NHS Five Year Forward View, October 2014, https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/5yfv-web.pdf

You can read the original HSJ article ‘Lord Prior: Two Ways to Help Deliver Our Promise of Transformation’ here: http://www.hsj.co.uk/newsletter/home/lord-prior-two-ways-to-help-deliver-our-promise-of-transformation/7000969.article?WT.tsrc=email&WT.mc_id=Newsletter308