We're very excited about one of our new developments - our care planning product. Working with Lewisham CCG, the South London Health Innovation Network and SBRI, the project aims to build sensible online technology to support care planning.
The first step in any software project is to understand the users and processes inside out. As such, I found myself in a church hall, somewhere in Lewisham as an honorary diabetes health care professional for the day.
The session, run by Lesley Thompson, was an introduction to Year of Care, the processes around it, how to deliver a care panning consultation and how to prepare practice, patients, and staff for a new way of working. Fortunately, Year of Care is a mature, well thought out framework with resources and answer to support that and more!
For me, role playing both patient and clinician was a unique way to see the advantages of care planning, but also how our system can work to support that. For any doubters, I heartily recommend attending a session. Having tried both ways, the prepared, educated patient gets so much more from the consultation than the person trying to take everything in in one go.
Care planing is the future of delivering integrated health and social care, to reducing unnecessary hospital visits, and in helping patients get a better handle on their health. I'm excited by the potential for our system to reduce administration for practices, deliver information more securely, quickly and cheaply than current methods. What's more, patients spend only 0.01% of their time with Health Care professionals. Technology can be there 24/7 to support and aide people as they deal with new and difficult life changes.