A Remote Healthcare Revolution: Empowering Patients and Clinicians

Just a handful of centuries ago, health issues ranging from imminent childbirth to a common cold were all remedied in the same way. Not by a dash to the hospital or an appointment at the local GP surgery, but a visit from the village doctor.
 
These jack-of-all-trades spent their days making personal house calls to local patients, tackling any case in front of them. But when populations grew and technologies advanced, village doctors gave way to larger on-site facilities, like the emergency centres and specialist departments we’re used to today. Yet as video calls make remote working a pillar of post-pandemic life, could more parts of healthcare follow—and make a return to the home?

Decentralised trials can bring faster results

Lessons from the pandemic are now being used to improve not just healthcare crises, but everyday medicine. Take vaccinations, for instance. A standard, pre-COVID vaccine development process involved multiple stages, and often took up to ten years for the medicine to be fully authorised. To urgently combat COVID, new collaborative approaches to science, manufacturing and distribution were created, resulting in record-breaking vaccine rollouts. This proved that traditional methods were inefficient and no longer sustainable for our modern world.

Looking to the future, decentralised medicinal trials, in which the process is moved into the patients’ homes, can remove remaining bottlenecks and harness tech such as AI to enable even faster results. In fact, a record number of around 1,300 decentralised trials were forecasted to be carried out in 2022, representing a 28% YoY increase. However, we can’t expect this to become the norm just yet. Instead, a hybrid mix of onsite patient and remote visits, using healthcare facilities closer to the patient’s home, will begin to form the basis of upcoming trials until full decentralisation is widely accepted.

NHS app development can alleviate pressure

Another consequence of the pandemic in the UK was the rise of the NHS app. As the government introduced vaccine passport requirements, the NHS app grew from four million users to eighteen million, and has since hit 30 million. But COVID pass facility aside, the wider app still seems relatively limited in functionality.  
 
This seems like a big missed opportunity. After all, third-party healthcare apps such as Babylon already offer a range of advanced features, such as video appointments with clinicians and AI-powered symptom checks. Before users delete the NHS app, healthcare leaders must strive to upgrade its services to ensure it’s fit for the future. Priorities should include self-service abilities, like offering live chat for patients to access instant health advice. AI within the app should also help to alleviate clinician admin, reducing the pressure on in-person care. The more actions that users can autonomously perform, the more efficient the NHS system becomes, helping patients access advice and treatment amid the backlog.

Flexible healthcare brings greater accessibility

Throughout the world there are  unofficial ‘hubs’ where people travel for specialist healthcare services, such as Brazil for plastic surgery or Turkey for cosmetic dental treatment. Even some of Britain’s hospitals specialise in certain areas, like the ‘Essex Cardiothoracic Centre’. But housing specialised knowledge in hubs can prove impractical, particularly for those who lack easy access. With the advent of remote communication, some patients shouldn’t need to travel any longer. They should be able to get an x-ray locally and forward the scan to the relevant consultants, or have a nearby clinician visit their home to carry out a blood test, rather than travel back to the original point of treatment. This will help to ease hospital bottlenecks.
 
Decentralisation will also support communities with little access to good healthcare practices and transport. According to the World Health Organisation, four in five developing countries worldwide offer at least one type of mobile programme to help care for their population, from health call centres to remote disaster relief support. However, these programmes can be advanced further, particularly when provided with modern technology by governments and NGOs. After all, NGOs often hold more data on patients than healthcare systems thanks to their support systems and communities. They can also help to improve education in poorer areas through digital communications and reduce data collection costs on patient needs and experiences.

Data access offers wider patient empowerment

Bringing healthcare ‘home’ also involves data. By offering patients genuine access to their personal medical information, they can feel empowered to make more informed decisions around their treatment. In England, this has recently become reality as, from November 2022, NHS patients with online accounts can view new entries in their clinical record. Data transparency helps to boost trust, engagement, self-care, and even healing. It’s the simplest way of bringing healthcare closer to home.

Ultimately, village doctors won’t be returning to our homesany time soon. But home-based healthcare is likely to become a key future component as more stakeholders recognise its benefits. After all, taxpayers will likely pay lower medical bills thanks to a reduction of preventable illnesses and lower-cost sites of care. Healthcare providers will be able to focus more resources on upgrading their services, and doctors and nurses will enjoy more time to care for urgent on-site patients without a mounting backlog. Plus, tech organisations can create innovations to capture large market opportunities—and patients can receive their preferred, most effective method of healthcare delivery. Now that’s something to write home about.

At C&T, we collaborate with some of the world’s largest healthcare and life science companies to create incredible experiences for both patients and practitioners. To explore our work across pharmaceutical, consumer healthcare, and medical device manufacturing, and discover how we can support your organisation’s transformation, simplyvisit our Life Sciences and Healthcare hub.

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