At the beginning of September, the Healthwatch Cumberland team were joined by Digital Unite and Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria for a session centred around digital health.
From booking appointments, to sharing your data, there is growing concern and discussion amongst the general public around changes in our healthcare systems, and the rise of digital health measures. The Healthwatch Cumberland team wanted to find out what local people think about digital health, and what more information and resources are needed to reassure local people and make sure no one is excluded.
The NHS App
From ordering repeat prescriptions, to checking your medical notes and viewing appointment reminders, the NHS App can be a very useful tool to access healthcare support and information digitally. There are lots of benefits to having this information available on the app, and the NHS is hoping to improve and grow the use of the app in future care for patients. However, not everyone uses smartphones and apps, and there is understandable concern around how this will work for digitally excluded people.
During the session, we heard from Rachael Barham, from Health Innovation North East North Cumbria, about how the NHS App services can be accessed by digitally excluded people. Rachael explained that, with your GP surgery and patient permission, the app log in can be accessed by a carer or family member on behalf of someone else via a proxy option. This means that parents or carers of vulnerable adults or digitally excluded people can access the app on someone else’s behalf to do things like order repeat prescriptions or keep track of scheduled appointments.
“There are a lot of different apps circulating which GP surgeries use. It doesn’t matter which app you use, as they are all useful tools for managing your health online, but using the NHS app means that you are helping to improve it.”
Many of the session participants were pleased to hear about the benefits of the app, and it’s proxy option.
Sharing your data for research purposes
During the session, we heard from Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria about data sharing with the NHS and how this data can be used for important research. Data is kept safely in a Secure Data Environment, or SDE.
We learnt that all data shared is anonymised and can only be accessed by those who need to use it for health research. The data is kept secure and cannot be accessed by anyone without permission.
“It felt reassuring to know that my data is kept safely in a vault and can’t be taken out.”
“I would like to help outcomes for other patients, so if my data can be used for this I am happy to share.”
“It’s not just about our health, it’s about the health of future generations.”
“We shouldn’t just give out all our info so easily, but a lot of it is already out there online, so why not do something more constructive with my data?”
-Feedback from session participants
Keeping everyone included
The Healthwatch Cumberland team were also excited to hear from Sarah Jewell from Digital Unite, who shared some information about digital inclusion groups and resources.
“Sarah and the Digital Unite team are involved in lots of really important work. They work alongside Ability Net, who teach people digital skills, and have lots of information about where people can access technology. I didn’t realise that there are even some local schemes for families and groups to have access to devices, like the Currys Tech4 Families scheme.”
-Suzannah, Healthwatch Cumberland
The session was full of lots of information, and important discussions, and we are really grateful to all the organisations involved.
“This session was gold dust.”
-Feedback from session participant