Delivering technology in the NHS

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. That said, you can if it’s thirsty!

In the NHS when technology fails to be adopted all we hear is, “didn’t work, doesn’t interface, makes more work, needs training!”All of this results in overspend, poor use of the workforce and duplication, leading to poor decision-making incidents and patient harm.

We can’t just blame the tech though, how we commission technology is, I would say, the first hurdle, along with poor implementation. Do we actually understand what we want it to do! Given the lag between thought, budget, award delivery, constantly moving onto version whatever! And that’s before we even think about implementation. We seem to think that if we just drop a tech solution in it will fix everything, and, to some extent it can when running in the background, but for front line care it needs to be enhancing the way we work and to do this we have to work with it, alongside it and embrace it. We will never replace people, but we have to work together, and implementation is key to this success.

We often fail to ask the end user, standardise the data and have a clear vision for its use. We also fail to create demand for the data. We (UK gov) plan to enable communication between health and social care when we talk about digital intervention. Enabling people to access information and use it. For this we need to have systems in place, talk a common language and one that starts from the ground up. We need to use our experts to create a long-term vision, one that can flex as we do with a set of basic standards that remains fixed, keeping the commercial competition but enabling all budgets. We need to fund licencing over time, move out of the continuous pilot phase into one that is sustained. One that makes a difference and can demonstrate it through its data story telling.

So, I take you back; you can lead a horse to water, but if we don’t create a demand for the data then there is absolutely no point in anybody using it. If we don’t standardise information, people won’t understand the data. But when we do create the demand and do this with an measurable end goal, we create use, efficiencies, improvement, enabling safer systems, designed by the users for the users.  

We drink.