BY Waqas Qaimkhani
01 Jul 2022

Healthcare As It Happens - Tech in Healthcare

Considering how quickly science and technology has been advancing in the 21st century, it is no surprise that healthcare is constantly adapting to the new developments in the modern world. We see revolutionary, life-changing innovations introduced annually, and the last two years have been no different. In this month's blog post, we take a look at some of the recent technological developments in the world of healthcare.

Rise Of Wearables Brings Life-Changing Updates

Wearables have been around for some time now, but the opportunities that they potentially bring to the patient experience are only getting more exciting.

As of 2019, wearables like smartwatches and other fitness bands are used by at least 27% of the British public, according to a YouGov poll. Based on the decrease in percentage of people who have never owned a wearable device, this rise in wearables will only continue to grow in the future.

While wearables are mostly thought of as smartwatches and fitness bands, these are not the only types of wearables that have been created in the last few years.

In Kenya, a prosthetic with life-changing potential was developed last year — the first bio-robotic arm controlled with brain signals. The signals are converted into an electric current by a “NeuroNode” biopotential headset receiver and are subsequently sent into the robot’s circuit to produce motion. The ADAMM (Automated Device for Asthma Monitoring and Management) patch has also been created and developed since 2015, and set to be released this year. It is designed to be attached to the chest and monitors symptoms like respiration patterns, heart rate and skin temperature (among others) in order to help those with asthma to manage their condition more easily.

Wearables like these give people immediate access and control when it comes to their health, and they have the potential to change the lives of those living with chronic illnesses or disabilities. There is certainly more to expect as even more innovative wearable tech is released to the public in the near future.

Healthcare Digitisation Plan Goes Online In England

People in England will now receive more healthcare treatments online, enabling them to check NHS records, browse messages from their GP and attend virtual wards, under government plans to digitise healthcare.

Ministers are hoping that the use of online technology will free up hospital beds and clinician time by enabling doctors and nurses to remotely observe around 500,000 people. The plan for digital health and social care also sets out how patients will be able to manage hospital appointments, book Covid vaccines and have virtual consultations through the NHS app, which 28 million people now have downloaded onto their phones, by March 2023. Additionally, with this digital plan, patients will be able to complete hospital pre-assessment checks from home by September 2024.

Under the latest plan, care teams will also be able to better share information through joined-up digital health and social care records. However, this digitisation plan could have some issues as fewer than half (45%) of social care providers use a digital social care record, and 23% of care home staff cannot access the internet consistently at work, according to the DHSC.

This new plan will also create a new national digital workforce strategy. This will help to generate 10,500 more positions in the data and tech workforce as part of several measures aimed at strengthening workers’ skills and making the NHS an attractive place to work for digital professionals. How to use the digital technology will also be included in university curriculums in degrees that train future NHS staff, while accessible training will be provided to adult social care workers.

For the full story, read the Guardian article.

Patients Swallow Miniature Camera for Cancer Checks

In 2021, the NHS rolled out a new initiative that would allow patients to use a new form of technology to check for cancer. This new tech was called the Colon Capsule Endoscopy (CCE) and it was branded as the ‘PillCam’. The PillCam was deployed during the pandemic as the number of traditional colonoscopies that could be carried out were reduced. The device weighs only 3 grams and is 26.2mm long, and 11.4mm in diameter.

Once swallowed, the PillCam will pass through the patient’s digestive system and take photographs as it does so. The images are sent to a recording device that the patient wears on a belt and are downloaded and reviewed at the hospital. While on its way through a patient’s bowels, the single-use PillCam can take up to 50,000 pictures before being “flushed away”.

During the initial phase, a group of 11,000 NHS patients in England received the capsule cameras in more than 40 parts of the country. In February 2022, more than 2000 people had successfully used the PillCam in Scotland. Professor Angus Watson, Consultant Colorectal Surgeon and Clinical Lead for CCE, stated “traditionally, patients undergoing this test would require sedation and could be quite anxious coming in for their appointment. This test is painless and although they will still need to undergo the same cleansing preparation beforehand, all they are doing is swallowing the capsule and letting the camera do the work.”

While the PillCam was mainly used to help screen for bowel cancer, Medtronic markets the device as able to help across a variety of bowel-related illnesses. The system allows for direct visualization of the small bowel, supporting greater confidence when monitoring lesions that may be related to Crohn’s disease, obscure bleeding, or iron deficiency anaemia, Medtronic claims.

For more details on this story, read through the full article by Petapixel.

NHS Workers Use VR To Tackle Inequality

With the NHS mental health services facing record-breaking levels of demand, researchers from Maudsley Learning at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) are building VR simulations to deliver diversity & inclusion training to frontline mental health staff.

With the use of VR, mental health workers will be able to enter an immersive and realistic environment to practice skills like empathy, inclusion, and interpersonal awareness before applying them on the ward. Educators use the scenarios as a springboard for a discussion in a structured debrief conversation. The simulations have been built by Virti: a VR training company founded by an NHS surgeon in Bristol to improve healthcare training. Maudsley hopes it will help speed up Diversity & Inclusion training, improve patient outcomes and tackle racial, ethnic and gender disparities in mental health care provision.

The Virti platform is also being used to deliver surgical training to medical students at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, and to support medics in Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in developing essential communication skills. Maudsley Learning is working to develop, trial and deploy more mental health based VR training modules, including diversity and inclusion, conflict de-escalation, reducing restrictive practices and training to increase awareness and knowledge of how mental and physical health can impact on each other.

For the full story, read the Health Tech Digital article.

Wearable technology to be rolled out to all type 1 diabetes patients

With the NHS Long Term Plan, people living with type 1 diabetes are now eligible for life-changing flash glucose monitors on the NHS. The NHS Long Term Plan has already helped almost three in five people with Type 1 diabetes to access the monitors that allow people to check their glucose levels more easily and regularly. The wearable gadgets, the size of a £2 coin, have a sensor that easily sits on the arm, allowing patients to check their glucose levels with a one-second scan.

Monitors link to an easy-to-use app on your phone, where people can access the data gathered by the device. Unlike conventional monitors they allow patients to view patterns over time, not only showing current and previous glucose levels but also predicting what level they can rise to.

The NHS in England currently spends around £10 billion a year on diabetes – around 10% of its entire budget. Tools like continuous glucose monitoring, which help patients better manage their condition and reduce associated illness and hospitalisations, can prove hugely cost effective.

National NHS Specialty Adviser for Diabetes, Professor Partha Kar, said “These monitors are a win-win – they support diabetes patients to live healthier lives, reduce their risk of hospitalisation while also helping to reduce pressure on NHS services and provide better value for money for taxpayers”.

For the full details, read the full blog post by the NHS.