Will NHS reform bring health care fit for you?

Sybilmari [above Duncan’s post] obviously has a poor impression of doctors’ diagnostic competence and I guess is not alone, so I wonder whether this is a good idea from their point of view as well.

A bot-driven automated advice service might appeal to many on the doorstep of the NHS wondering whether or not to go in, but I can foresee reliability problems, and serious potential risks, unless the system is extremely carefully crafted and monitored. Despite the supposed ‘intelligence’ of such smart systems based on binary interrogation and on formulaic scripted responses there is a risk of misunderstandings, defective algorithms, and erroneous diagnoses. I would also consider it possible for patients to play the system to get the responses that satisfy them rather than the ones they need.

I should like to know more about this development because it also has the potential to streamline primary care and relieve the frontline pressure on the National Health Service. I am not against it in principle but there should be no place within such a system for any degree of commercial preference. It must be secure, patient-orientated, informed by best practice at every level, and trustworthy. It should never become a by-pass for clinical excellence and comprehensive care and treatment but it could be a useful gateway to the right resources. I think the world-renowned medical institutions in the UK could make it good if anyone can so it’s worth giving it a chance, I feel.

Just for info on it John – its run by Babylon health care , one investor is British -one is European and one is a subsidiary of Google (you will need to track into it to find it ).

Thank you, Duncan.

Before your comment on 07/01/2016 I knew nothing about this proposal so what I wrote above was straight off the top of my head. I have since read about it on the digitalhealth.net website [“Babylon Health to power NHS111 with ‘AI triage’ bot“] [“AI” stands for “artificial intelligence”] and it seems that my assumptions and concerns were realistic. However, there were two aspects that I did not anticipate, one good, one worrying: (a) The system will “tell people where to go and who to see, as close to their home as possible, so they can make the right choices”; and (b) Doctors “have . . . expressed concerns about the reliance on . . . self-reported symptoms for determining the severity of a person’s illness”.

The article was last updated on 6 January 2017 and is well worth reading at:
http://www.digitalhealth.net/digital_patient/48395/babylon-health-to-power-nhs-111-with-‘ai-triage’-bot

Obviously, people self-report their symptoms when they go to see their General Practitioner, but the doctor can make judgments based on how they describe them, their body language, their physical appearance, the presentation of their symptoms, and other physical signs [like their temperature and the condition of their tongue which reveal a lot]. This is not possible with a chatbot. However, as an issue it has been recognised and will no doubt be addressed.

I am not concerned about the ownership structure of Babylon Healthcare. What is more important is that its functions and performance are strictly specified and controlled by the NHS and the outcomes closely monitored.

Babylon Healthcare passed its Care Quality Commission [CQC] inspection in October 2016 and was found “to have provided safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services in accordance with the relevant regulations”. Another remote GP consultation service called “Dr Now” has also been provisionally approved by the CQC. By April 2017 the CQC plans to roll out a more focused regulatory regime for the growing number of digital healthcare services, many of them run by companies charging for private access to NHS doctors.

This is potentially a revolution in access to primary health care and raises several pertinent questions. It would be a worthwhile subject for a full examination and report by Which?