Patient outcomes will drive the future of healthtech

SPONSORED BY B.Braun

Coro­n­avirus has put the health of the UK pop­u­la­tion firm­ly at the top of everyone’s agen­da. Dai­ly sta­tis­tics read out on the news detail­ing the impact of the virus is tes­ta­ment to the fact that patient out­comes now mat­ter to us all.

Response from the NHS has been admirable; one of the world’s largest health­care providers has done its best deal­ing with the pan­dem­ic effec­tive­ly. Its sys­tems, peo­ple and organ­i­sa­tions have had a razor-sharp focus on tack­ling COVID-19. This has cre­at­ed a cat­a­lyst for change, accel­er­at­ing the uptake of tech­nol­o­gy, use of data and col­lab­o­ra­tion across sec­tors.

“In the last six months, the focus on clin­i­cal out­comes and excel­lence has been unprece­dent­ed. This has hap­pened at pace and at scale, with a renewed focus on the patient. There’s also been a real readi­ness to change dur­ing this pan­dem­ic. A huge num­ber of stake­hold­ers with­in the NHS want to do things dif­fer­ent­ly and be inno­v­a­tive,” says David Oates, UK group man­ag­ing direc­tor at B. Braun Med­ical Ltd, one of the world’s lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers of health­care solu­tions.

“We can­not lose this momen­tum. There’s so much poten­tial going for­wards. Part­ner­ships are key to this process. Through col­lab­o­ra­tive and con­struc­tive work along­side the NHS, we can improve patient out­comes for the long term. Cer­tain­ly, the healthtech indus­try has a sig­nif­i­cant part to play.”

Through col­lab­o­ra­tive and con­struc­tive work along­side the NHS, we can improve patient out­comes for the long term

With the COVID cri­sis still lin­ger­ing, the NHS is under increas­ing pres­sure to do more, reduce health­care inequal­i­ties, improve the qual­i­ty of care nation­al­ly, man­age the pan­dem­ic and ramp up planned care that has been cur­tailed. The healthtech sec­tor has stepped up dur­ing this time with the com­mon pur­pose of sup­port­ing the NHS to deliv­er care.

“But we need to do more work as an indus­try to devel­op evi­dence on how much the NHS stands to gain by using exist­ing or new tech­nol­o­gy effec­tive­ly. We have to take more respon­si­bil­i­ty. Val­ue-based pro­cure­ment is com­ing of age around the world. Far more can be achieved by buy­ing and imple­ment­ing healthtech based on out­comes, rather than com­pet­ing on the price of a prod­uct,” says Oates at B. Braun, which sells 5,000 dif­fer­ent prod­ucts cov­er­ing most ther­a­peu­tic areas, 95 per cent of which are man­u­fac­tured by the com­pa­ny.

For instance, take infu­sion pumps. B. Braun sells thou­sands of smart devices to the NHS. They are used to deliv­er med­i­cines to patients in hos­pi­tals coun­try­wide on a dai­ly basis. These can be con­nect­ed to wire­less net­works so they can be updat­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly with the lat­est soft­ware, input data into elec­tron­ic patient records and be cal­i­brat­ed with med­ica­tion error-reduc­tion libraries.

“At a gen­er­ous esti­mate, only 30 per cent are used in this way. They’re pur­chased because they’re smart capa­ble. If deployed in the right way they could save the NHS time and mon­ey. Yet the pro­cure­ment process is often based on the pur­chase of the elec­tron­ic device itself, rather than on reduc­ing drug-deliv­ery errors or time saved search­ing for patient records,” says Oates.

“The big chal­lenge when it comes to evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion, is how do you make sure it’s used prop­er­ly and has an impact on patient out­comes, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and safe­ty. We need to con­vince the NHS to pro­cure on this basis. For that we must pro­vide more evi­dence, more data in part­ner­ship, so the full ben­e­fits are realised.”

Beyond val­ue-based pro­cure­ment, COVID-19 has also been a real dri­ver for sup­port­ing patients at home. It’s in the inter­ests of the NHS and indus­try to deliv­er high-qual­i­ty health­care in more effi­cient set­tings beyond hos­pi­tals. Clin­i­cal care in the com­mu­ni­ty will be crit­i­cal going for­wards, as will the inte­gra­tion of care sys­tems. This involves more joined-up and localised think­ing involv­ing the NHS and local author­i­ties.

“Coro­n­avirus is mak­ing things crys­tal clear: local data and local pub­lic health sys­tems are more effec­tive in deal­ing with out­breaks that are localised. This is true of health­care in gen­er­al. It needs to be tai­lored and pri­or­i­ties set to deal with local needs, espe­cial­ly where health­care inequal­i­ties exist and need to be tack­led,” says Chris Ibbot­son, out­pa­tient divi­sion man­ag­er at B. Braun, a fam­i­ly-owned com­pa­ny, active in the sec­tor since 1839.

For instance, there are more than 2.5 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing with can­cer in the UK, just over a quar­ter have chemother­a­py. Care at home is desir­able, espe­cial­ly for those over 75 who strug­gle to trav­el for chemother­a­py appoint­ments. This accounts for more than a third of all patients.

“It is pos­si­ble with the right healthtech to deliv­er chemother­a­py infu­sions at home and mon­i­tor patients. The key here is what the patient is com­fort­able with. Per­son­alised med­i­cine is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant. Peo­ple are now more will­ing to par­tic­i­pate in their own health­care,” says Graeme Cameron, B. Braun’s hos­pi­tal care divi­sion man­ag­er.

“At the same time, we need to elim­i­nate the inef­fi­cien­cies that exist between health­care and patients. It has to be as effi­cient, as tar­get­ed and as resource­ful as it can be,” adds Michael Par­den, Aes­cu­lap divi­sion man­ag­er at B. Braun, which is on the board of the Asso­ci­a­tion of British Healthtech indus­tries.

The poten­tial for healthtech is increas­ing­ly appar­ent in more areas, for exam­ple with B. Braun’s dig­i­tal reha­bil­i­ta­tion sup­port for knee and hip patients. This uses a range of motion sen­sors and a down­load­able app for a patient’s smart­phone. It can track exer­cise, log pain and remain in con­tact with hos­pi­tals via a mes­sag­ing func­tion.

“We can mon­i­tor whether patients are doing exer­cise to build up the mus­cle before treat­ment and whether they’re doing exer­cise after their oper­a­tion. It is all done remote­ly and can reduce the need for out­pa­tient and com­mu­ni­ty phys­io­ther­a­py appoint­ments,” says Oates.

“If we could do this for 10 or 15 per cent of all knee replace­ments on a day-case basis, it would take pres­sure off the rest of the NHS. It may only apply to a small cohort of patients, but it can have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the over­all sys­tem. Look­ing to the future we can achieve so much more.”

Find out more about B. Braun at www.bbraun.co.uk