Digital healthcare in the NHS expands with £150 million in government funding

Supporting social care, the government have invested £150 million over the next 3 years to enable digital healthcare transformation, ranging from virtual wards to vaccine records on phones

Transforming health and social care in technological applications including high-speed connectivity, digital skills and cyber resilience, digital healthcare in the NHS is having a funding reform.

Dependent on having the right digital foundations in place, these government advances have already made huge progress. Over 28 million people now have the NHS App, over 40 million people have an NHS login, and most NHS trusts have an electronic patient record system in place.

The £150 million of funding for digital adoption and digitisation of adult social care, as announced in the recent white paper, sets out that health and social care will be delivered in a fundamentally different way, taking forward lessons from the pandemic, and global tech pioneers.

A health and social care system that will be much faster and more effective

The NHS App will be at the heart of these plans, as people have continued to grasp the opportunity to have healthcare on their phones – which paves the way for personalised medicine and care for the NHS.

Making the app more accessible to those seeking NHS services, this plan withholds an array of new features over the coming years, with new functionality and more value for patients every single month.

This plan includes other initiatives such as a £2 billion of funding to support electronic patient records to be in all NHS trusts and to help over 500,000 people use digital tools to manage their long-term health conditions in their own homes.

This funding aims to connect data and enable secure, transformative data-sharing, including investment in data infrastructure at national, sub-national and ICS levels to support day-to-day care, population health, planning and research in digital healthcare.

Additionally, it aims to transform pathways, especially to support the recovery of services post-pandemic and make the NHS App a ‘front door’ to the NHS.

Benefits offer billions of pounds inefficiencies, economic growth and private investments

Directing this document at leaders in the health, social care and technology sectors, the government are laying the foundations for a better digital future by 2025. Digital transformation of health and social care is a top priority for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England (NHSE).

The government will deliver 4 goals of reform for digital healthcare, identified by the Secretary of State, including:

• Prevent people’s health and social care needs from escalating
• Personalise health and social care and reduce health disparities
• Improve the experience and impact of people providing services
• Transform performance