Patient experience of digital health: We still have a way to go

Rachel Power

Chief Executive, The Patients Association and Chair, Patient Coalition for AI, Data and Digital Tech in Health

Over the past year, the NHS has been forced to rapidly adapt to an incredibly challenging environment. Digital health technologies have been a key aspect of this urgent pandemic response.

Despite the fact that digital health technologies hold great potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of health services to the benefit of patients and the NHS, this has not been the experience of all patients.

Alongside fantastic examples where digital innovations have provided vital services that would otherwise not have been available, there are also cases where patients have struggled with access or found that digital technology did not improve their care. Beyond telephone consultations, we still have a long way to go before we can say that patients across the UK are truly benefitting from the full potential of digital health technology.

Learning from patient experience of digital health

The Patient Coalition for AI, Data and Digital Tech in Health recently published a report to help improve our understanding of the role of digital health during the pandemic. As the Coalition is focused on championing the patient perspective, this report draws on in-depth research, a new patient survey and a collection of case studies of good practice in digital health technology to shed light on the patient experience of digital health.

It offers a range of principles for the most effective approach to digital health, including ensuring technologies respond directly to patient needs and maintain the human aspect of care.

The report also offers recommendations to the Government and the NHS to help ensure we learn from the unique experience of the past year – both the good and the bad. We must continue to improve the implementation and uptake of digital health technology to the benefit of all patients.

We still have a long way to go before we can say that patients across the UK are truly benefitting from the full potential of digital health technology.

Patient priorities must lie at the heart of digital health

If we are serious about capitalising on the incredible potential value of digital innovations to the benefit of all patients, they must be developed and introduced in partnership with patients. Patients’ needs and preferences must be the starting point for the use of digital technology. A partnership approach will not only achieve this but also ensure that patients come to feel increasingly comfortable with related, complex issues such as data sharing.

Ultimately, there is still much to be done to improve access to digital health so that we can continue to move from pockets of progress and cases of good practice to widespread implementation and use.