Is investing in Healthtech the answer to helping the straining NHS?

According to many a politician, technology in Healthcare could be the saviour of the struggling NHS. But what exactly is Healthtech, and what is its role in easing the burden on healthcare?

Talkinghealthtech.com describe Health Technology as a broad discipline, a field that accounts for technologies i.e. devices to the healthcare systems for diagnosis, patient care, treatment and improvement of a person’s health.

And with an ageing population demanding higher levels of care than ever before, the number of doctors progressing to specialty training dwindling to its lowest rate in the history of the NHS, advances in technology could be seen as the perfect answer to the mounting problem.

Three years ago, the NHS app itself was unknown, and the ability to access your own heath records was unheard of by the vast majority of the UK public.  Fast forward 3 years and one pandemic, and over 22 million of us have downloaded the app.  Whilst for many of us, this was a means to demonstrating our Covid-19 vaccination record, the ease by which we complied, suggest that we have a growing openness to managing our health through apps and technology.

As smartphones, tablets and mobile apps become the norm, Healthtech can combine medical interventions with technology to bring benefits to both the patient and the medics.

In fact, a survey by digital start up, Quin, has found that 26% of the UK public would rather use health apps than visit a GP or hospital, and that usage of health apps has increased by 37% since the COVID-19 pandemic began.  The data also reveals that over half (55%) would trust a diagnosis provided by an app and a quarter of those say they are more trusting of apps since the outbreak.

With apps now available to help manage weight loss, diet, asthma, diabetes, menstrual cycles and even fertility, it seems we, as a population, have increasingly having more trust in technology than ever before.  And with 75% of all health app owners, opening the app more than once a week, this rich data is being pulled back to the app manufacturers to build high quality insight and real-time trends across huge user groups.

Our wearable devices (smart watches, fitbits, GoPro’s) offer remote tracking of our habits, heart rates and activity.  Health insurance providers are offering wearable devices to customers, as incentives to keep active, even awarding points to those who increase their daily activity, to redeem against gift cards and other items.  And car insurance companies can also now use data from our smartwatches and phones to understand any distractions we may have as we drive, validating or not, insurance claims.

Arquella, a recent Traditum investment company, has developed an enhanced app based nurse call system, AIDA, recording in real time, interactions, care needs and service levels through its technology.  The powerful platform strengthens and simplifies care evidencing, reduces the burden of admin, and increases reporting accuracy and understanding of carer and resident activity.  This meaningful data is then analysed and shared to encourage improvements in wellbeing and care delivery. AIDA Assist captures this data from every care moment, giving managers full oversight of care provision for the first time.

With the arrival of true augmented reality, enabling trainee doctors to see medical procedures simulated right in front of them, and by surgeons wearing an AR enabled head mounted device that allows them to view patient vitals during a procedure without the need to look away and gather data from multiple displays, technology is helping reduce training time, risk, and error rates too.  In fact, Goldman Sachs predicts that the use of AR and VR in the healthcare industry will reach $5.1 billion by 2025.

Investing in the development and creation of innovative health technology is both inevitable and necessary, allowing the quality of our future health to be managed much more independently, reducing GP and hospital visits and helping us all live a longer and more fulfilled life.

To find out more about how Traditum is investing in Healthtech, get in touch:

hello@traditum.co.uk