Intended for healthcare professionals

Views And Reviews Acute Perspective

David Oliver: Telehealth and telecare need a different approach

BMJ 2017; 359 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j5108 (Published 28 November 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;359:j5108
  1. David Oliver, consultant in geriatrics and acute general medicine
  1. Berkshire
  1. davidoliver372{at}googlemail.com

“Technology and innovation are key to saving the NHS,” the former health secretary Alan Milburn wrote in the Observer.1 Milburn, who now chairs PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Insight Industries Oversight Board, said that “the world is on the verge of a huge leap forward in healthcare, driven by advances in knowledge and technology . . . an influx of new mobile and bio-devices will mean we will be able to check—and take greater control over—our health in a way never previously possible.”

Milburn is hardly alone in this zeitgeist mantra, now repeated so often that it’s become a new orthodoxy. Many health policy commentators, politicians, and management consultants are pushing digital remote healthcare, seemingly ecstatic at a brave new world with less need for trained healthcare practitioners or face-to-face human contact.

Private industry, not the NHS, is developing the technology, and this demands a potential return on costly …

View Full Text