Digital firm builds platform to ease pressure on NHS

A DIGITAL health services firm has developed a tool to reduce the pressure on the NHS.
Peter WilkinsonPeter Wilkinson
Peter Wilkinson

Inhealthcare said its platform will help the health service to capitalise on advances in technology that allow people to monitor their own health.

Britain is seeing a proliferation of self-care applications on devices such as mobile phones.

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Inhealthcare, part of Intechnology plc, said its platform can bring all the data generated by these devices into one place for the NHS.

Peter Wilkinson, chief executive of Intechnology, said: “I’m a great believer in telehealth.”

But he added: “The data has to be held in one common place, accessible to all, otherwise you will end up with disparate data all over the place, which is no use to man nor beast.”

Telehealth has the potential to reduce the pressure on the health service, said Mr Wilkinson.

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He added: “There are hundreds of mundane functions that should not be taking up the time of GP surgeries or hospital departments.”

He is predicting that within five years, 70 per cent of those functions will be done at home via telehealth.

For the new system to work, Mr Wilkinson said the NHS should “kitemark” apps and devices through an approval process.

GPs should then integrate these into patient care through the prescription system, he added.

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Mr Wilkinson said: “At the moment, we believe we have the only system that does it all.

“The NHS, if it adopts this now, will have complete control of telehealth and will be world leaders for the next 10 years.”

The company is in talks with the NHS about adopting the platform.

Bryn Sage, chief executive of Inhealthcare, said: “Imagine if banking had not embraced technology, the banks would be cluttered up with people trying to get appointments to see bank managers, to cash a cheque, to get a statement, to set up a direct debit. Now you do it all yourself.”

Mr Wilkinson is a serial entrepreneur whose ventures have created thousands of jobs in Yorkshire.

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