Introduction

Recent national analysis (Salciccioli et al 2018) highlights that life expectancy and mortality rates are no longer improving year on year. They may even be worsening for some people, such as younger people and those with chronic respiratory diseases. Other downward trends reflect the effects of winter and periods of cold weather on mortality rates (Public Health England (PHE) 2018).

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is now the fourth greatest cause of death for people of all ages in the UK (Davies 2018). Changing unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, such as smoking, could prevent up to 80% of new cases of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and many cancers (Davies 2018). Multimorbidity is increasingly becoming a problem for the NHS, particularly general practice, as more patients are aged over 65. There is an urgent need to deliver care more productively and efficiently to accommodate this escalating demand. The overall aim for sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs) and integrated care systems (ICSs) must be to redress unwarranted clinical variations in the delivery of care.

NHS England’s (2019) Long Term Plan sets out its ambitions for the health and care service, and promises additional funding for the next ten years to enable people and practices to benefit from the latest digital technologies. The plan states that all patients will have access to their care plans and communications from their care professionals through an NHS app by 2021. In addition, digitally-enabled primary and outpatient care, in which patients will be cared for and supported at home using remote monitoring and digital tools, will go mainstream across the NHS by 2024.

The King’s Fund (2019) highlights the need for digital infrastructure, and for patients and the workforce to be supported with digital tools, because these capabilities enable teams to care for patients better and continuously improve the population’s health. A partnership between professionals and the public is needed to encourage patients to manage their own health, which is part of a broader cultural change resulting in a ‘shared responsibility for health’.

The Topol Review (Health Education England 2019) includes recommendations about the workforce element of the NHS Long Term Plan. It notes that the workforce and the population are changing, and have new expectations, and that digital healthcare technology should address the healthcare challenges of the 21st century. It also suggests that new technologies will not replace healthcare professionals, but will enhance their care, giving them more time to look after patients, improve outcomes and empower patients to participate more in their own care.

The adoption of innovative digital technologies in health and social care pathways is often poorly coordinated and inconsistent (Ramanauskas 2019). In England, new schemes are often run as time-limited pilots, with insufficient budgets and short-term planning, and so do not enable system-wide change or widespread adoption. Many clinicians view patient-centred technology with suspicion. For example, an early trial of expensive equipment in patients’ homes was found to require broadband and a 24/7 monitoring service. When all additional charges were considered, the cost-benefits became unclear (Henderson et al 2013).

Background

The programme described in this article involved readily available, free or low-cost technology that can empower patients to take more responsibility for their health and well-being without relying on a 24/7 monitoring service. Technology-enabled care (TEC) will be vital to the sustainability of the NHS and social care if and when it is adopted as usual practice at scale. TEC should help to alleviate demands on the NHS by providing delivery methods that help practitioners to substitute remote care for face-to-face consultations when they are justified. This includes speeding up follow-on care, such as sharing and acting on test results, and encouraging people to take more responsibility for their health conditions and lifestyle habits, thereby reducing pressure on frontline health services.

Over the past two years, Staffordshire STP’s digital workstream has been introducing a TEC programme aligned to the national ambitions for STPs (King’s Fund 2017) for a patient population of 1.2 million registered at 155 general practices. The programme focuses on strengthening prevention and early intervention, improving productivity, tackling variations in care, developing enablers, upskilling the workforce, and redesigning and improving healthcare services in all settings. It promotes healthy living and lifestyle choices through trusted mobile apps, and telehealth interactions between patients and clinicians. It also uses social media to engage with patients across the county and in peer support groups, and encourage them to care for themselves.

The aim of this TEC county-wide programme was to digitally enable general practice at scale. It focuses on clinical variations, such as those in care for respiratory conditions and associated clinical outcomes.

TEC could reduce clinical variations in care and alleviate demands on services by providing healthcare professionals with easily accessible tools for treating patients and improve productivity. But if TEC is implemented without enough investment in equipment, or in enabling the digital inclusion of patients, carers, clinicians and managers, it could exacerbate health inequalities, variations in care and associated outcomes (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) 2018).

Methods

Technology for the programme, such as video consultation, trusted health and well-being-related apps, social media and web-based resources supporting care of long-term conditions (LTCs) and redressing adverse lifestyle habits, was picked for affordability or availability. Some popular, relatively low-cost or nationally-funded commercial applications, such as Flo simple telehealth interactive texting, AliveCor’s KardiaMobile device for screening for atrial fibrillation and online clinical consultation tools, were also included.

Results

About 300 attendees at the workshops and national conference gave their personal perspectives of using TEC in their practices or other settings, and of how digital enablement has helped them to interact with patients and carers and improved the care they provide. Boxes 1 and 2 show the main challenges and opportunities they reported.

A mix of GPNs, GPs and managers who participated in workshops gave feedback on the potential use of relevant TEC with patients with asthma or COPD (Box 3). Many practice teams subsequently requested TEC training and development.

Those attending the workshops discussed variations in the populations of the six Staffordshire clinical commissioning groups and how practices should address low achievement through comparisons with national averages (Table 1).

Each practice received a tailored report comparing its averages to those of the CCG and nationally. The report then identified possible types of TEC the practice could implement to improve clinical asthma outcomes and reduce the annual cost of hospital admissions for patients with asthma (Box 4).

Fourteen of the 29 GPNs who took part in the ALSs chose to use TEC mainly with patients who had asthma and/or COPD, rather than other long-term conditions. The modes of TEC they were using six months later are shown in Table 2.

Discussion

Three years after the inception of STPs, the landscape continues to evolve, with the emergence of new models of care, including ICSs and accountable care systems (ACSs), that aim to bring about greater integration of health and social care services. There is a lack of integration between health and care services, however, with NHS organisations tending to work on digital enablement in silos. This lack of integration often leads to patients being unaware of TEC and services, and fewer opportunities for collaborative working between care providers.

The TEC programme in Staffordshire has started to bridge this gap by increasing practice teams’ engagement with, and deployment of, TEC, and their interaction with other organisations in the local healthcare economy in working towards a digitally transformed NHS. The programme has helped to increase patient engagement through the use of technology, allowing them to access healthcare services in several new ways. As a result, the number of patients taking a more active role in their healthcare treatment and the management of their LTCs is increasing. TEC is also addressing operational issues in primary care by enhancing clinical productivity, leading to fewer missed appointments and more efficient communication with patients. The programme has also increased engagement between patients and clinicians, which has led to improved clinical outcomes.

As Table 1 indicates, there is much work to do nationally and across the STP to reduce health inequalities in LTCs, such as COPD (NICE 2018). Practice reports highlight the disparities in this area, but also suggest how they can be redressed through digital delivery. Table 2 shows the effectiveness of digital upskilling clinicians and how their appetite for TEC increases as they realise its benefits. This results in greater adoption of TEC, leading to a more robust, transformational approach to tackling the prevalence and treatment of, for example, respiratory condition.

The national analysis of trends in mortality rates has highlighted the importance of increased efforts to reduce patients’ risks from the main LTCs by addressing the underlying determinants of health and reducing adverse lifestyle factors, such as smoking and obesity (Gabel et al 2018, PHE 2018). The analysis emphasises the need to proactively support the most vulnerable in society, particularly older people, to minimise the effects of preventable deterioration in their health.

The population health management approach described in this article, particularly in relation to the capture of comparative data and its use in improving services, should underpin the intelligent commissioning of healthcare services, such as pulmonary rehabilitation services, as more people are diagnosed and managed with COPD. Once patients are using TECS such as Flo Simple Telehealth, they are empowered to share the management of their LTCs with their clinicians.

One example of this was a Flo trial in a large inner-city practice in which 25 patients with COPD were signed up to Flo, after which only two were admitted to hospital during the following winter (Collis et al 2014).

The deployment of TEC in the local health economy enhances the quality and diversity of healthcare services offered to patients. Meanwhile, clinicians have developed an appetite for continued implementation and upscaling of TEC that has been endorsed by their fellow healthcare professionals.

Conclusion

Staffordshire STP’s TEC programme has demonstrated the need for commitment to digital solutions that enable system-wide transformation of healthcare. The benefits of giving clinicians and patients access to TEC for the main LTCs and the necessary digital upskilling include enhanced productivity, improved clinical outcomes and patient empowerment. TEC increases engagement between clinicians and patients by offering alternatives to face-to-face appointments, saving patients and clinicians time, and enabling clinicians to engage with patients previously unreceptive to best practice. Patients with more opportunities to self-manage their health conditions become empowered and take a more central role in their healthcare, generating improved clinical outcomes. In addition, TEC can minimise unwarranted clinical variation and improve clinical outcomes across STP-based patient populations, through the willingness of front-line staff who recognise the challenges and the need to adopt TEC at scale.