e-Channels could generate major NHS savings

They said it is possible to cut transaction costs, reduce the need for travel and increase self-service through using online channels. Joanne Shaw, the chair of NHS Direct, said the organisation reckons it could save the health service £150m annually by introducing online decision aids. "It's demand management, in an entirely ethical way," she told a conference session on e-health innovation, in Liverpool on 23 June 2010. NHS Direct is currently piloting online decision aids with a number of trusts. These help patients assess their options for specific conditions before seeing a healthcare professional, and help reduce intervention rates as a result. Shaw said NHS Direct, which primarily deals with queries by telephone, has also established online chatroom services. Its nurses deal with queries on emergency contraception through a chat room linked from the home page of social networking site Bebo, which is popular with teenagers. She added that online systems are far cheaper to operate than telephone or face to face consultations. NHS Direct reckons it costs 12p for a patient to check their symptoms through an online checker, £8 through a telephone consultation, and "tens of pounds" if the same checks are carried out face to face. "Patients want a virtual, self-service NHS," she said. "We need to give it to them." However, many financial incentives for practitioners are linked to face to face work, rather than to electronic consultations, she added. Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, the chief executive of Patients Know Best, told the session that his start-up is helping patients join up their own data. Its initial customers include Great Ormond Street Hospital Trust and Bupa, allowing a patient's medication record to be shared between the NHS and the private sector. The firm's system is accredited for use within the NHS computer network and can be used for online consultations. Al-Ubaydli said that e-health services such as those provided by his company should take advantage of patients' own equipment, rather than the NHS aiming to provide new hardware. "The patient, whether it's through their mobile phone or their Nintendo Wii, already has a huge amount of computing equipment," he said. Rachel Stancliffe, director of charity the Campaign for Greener Healthcare, told the session that providing health electronically has "co-benefits", including environmental, financial and for the patient. Use of telephone consultations mean less travelling, fewer cancelled appointments, less disruption to patients' lives and patients feeling in more control of their treatment, she said.