TECHNOLOGY-ENABLED CARE SERVICES AND THE NEED FOR DIGITAL CAPABILITY
Technology-enabled care services (TECS) are gaining increasing recognition for their potential roles in underpinning delivery of care in general practice and across organisational boundaries. TECS include: video consultation/Skype/telemedicine, telehealth (information giving or interactive), apps, social media (for example, Facebook or Twitter), assistive technology/telecare, and online resources (for example, content of specific websites).1 Enthusiasts expect TECS to help individual patients to live healthier lives, better manage their own health and wellbeing, and reduce demand on local services so that the majority of the population can be supported in efficient ways, leaving traditional and increasingly scarce face-to-face resources focused on those with complex health conditions.
A national report2 from Health Education England and the Royal College of Nursing highlights the need for nurses to be digitally literate. Practice nurses should facilitate, guide, and support patients along their healthcare pathways. That should enhance patients’ understanding of their health and wellbeing, and empower self-care and shared care via associated modes of TECS, rather than the nurse simply being an authority figure who provides care on their own terms by ‘doing things’ to patients.2 Access to all aspects of technology with appropriate accessibility and availability will update and empower patients. This can be potentially threatening to the present nurse (or GP)–patient relationship, hence the reluctance of some clinicians to embrace this new thinking and approach in general practice.
SELECTING A SUITABLE MODE OF DELIVERY
There are many assumptions by clinicians that patients, especially older ones, are incapable of using technology. Patients are often unaware of what TECS are available in general practice. They may not use available resources to their full extent; for example, patients may go online to order repeat prescriptions, but not access their own medical records and learn more about the state of their health condition(s).
Often it is the clinicians who fail to inform …
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