The Health Check

Hot off the back of the recent budget, The Health Check returns for the spring edition of our quarterly insights from the healthtech sector. Over the past three months, we’ve seen the government announce a multi-billion investment plan towards a digital NHS, and significant emphasis put on prioritising patient care through the use of health technology. Here, we discuss the latest news and noteworthy updates from the healthtech landscape.

£3.4bn for digital NHS investments announced in spring budget

Encouraging news from the government this March: Hunt’s spring budget announced the intention to fund an NHS multi-billion productivity plan and to make the NHS the largest digitally integrated healthcare system in the world. This has been a long time coming, but we think it signifies that the government finally understands the size of the task ahead.

Enabling the end-to-end digitisation of patient records goes beyond just implementing EPR systems. While the latter are a good step, this capital investment boost extends to a variety of AI, digital and other tech-related investments. This is so the NHS can increase its annual productivity increase to two per cent per annum by 2028/29, in line with the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.

Healthtech advancements holding immense promise in enhancing patient safety

One pressing challenge facing healthcare today is managing vast volumes of unstructured, paper medical records. Cutting-edge healthtech advancements play a pivotal role in optimising care delivery, from ensuring the utmost security of digital information to empowering clinicians with a holistic view of a patient’s medical history precisely when it matters most – at the point of care.

Electronic document management systems (EDMS) such as our own searchable, scalable and secure EDMS MediViewer can tackle these problems head-on. These patient records can be stored and managed in one place, not only facilitating transparency and traceability but also instilling confidence in both healthcare providers and patients regarding privacy and protection of information. The result? Streamlined access to patient records, improving the quality and efficiency of care delivery while minimising the potential for errors associated with manual record-keeping processes.

Electronic patient records a hot topic at Digital Health Rewired 2024

Bringing the diverse digital health community and NHS staff together, this year’s Digital Health Rewired took place at NEC Birmingham between 12-13 March 2024. Following the positive news from the spring budget, it really couldn’t have come at a better time. From national leaders to NHS teams to industry experts, the stages were packed with speakers offering solutions to tackle challenges across digital, data, and innovation.

Leading the charge in advocating for digital patient records for the NHS, we were thrilled to exhibit at the event, and enjoyed two days of insightful conversations around the digitisation of medical records and the benefits of a clinically focused EDMS. With partnerships spanning more than 20 NHS Trusts, it was a pleasure to share insights to help healthcare providers unlock game-changing cost-saving and efficiency benefits with our EDMS, MediViewer.

Times Health Commission deems digital integration vital for better patient care

In February, expert commissioners from the worlds of medicine, business, policy, science, food and sport proposed practical reforms to get the NHS working. After a year-long investigation, the report emphasised the need for a technological revolution. With up to 60 different types of patient records and 10% of hospitals reliant on paper, a digital overhaul is deemed vital for better patient care.