Remote monitoring: embracing cultural change and developmental partnerships to enable patient choice

The Health Innovation Network and NHS England (London Region) recently held a series of procurement roundtables focused on remote monitoring. In this blog Dr Sanjay Gautama, Clinical Informatics Lead for the London region and consultant anaesthetist, discusses why it is crucial for suppliers and services to change their ways of working if they want to deliver change for patients.

At the heart of the promise of remote monitoring is the ability for patients to exercise greater choice as to where they receive safe and high-quality care. Remote monitoring is already starting to deliver on that promise, and enable people to be cared for in their own homes – a giant leap forward for digital technology in healthcare.

Whilst the early signs are that many patients are adapting well to this brave new world, commissioning, designing, and implementing these new technologies has been challenging for many of the professionals involved.

A particular impediment to progress thus far has been navigating existing procurement processes; a topic some of my colleagues discussed last month.

I am pleased that we are now in a position to share the in-depth outputs of recent collaborative work, bringing together perspectives from industry, commissioning, procurement and implementation teams to suggest a new way forward, focusing on developmental partnerships.

Getting the way we work together right has huge implications, not just for the initial procurement of digital infrastructure, but also the ongoing flow of data between different systems and ability to maintain interoperability as our requirements and ecosystems inevitably evolve over time.

Ultimately, it is the collegial and collaborative relationships between suppliers and services which will be vital if we want to see the pace of improvement to patient outcomes keep up with the potential speed of technological advancement in remote monitoring.

Technology should make doing the right thing for the patient the easiest option for the clinician – and developmental partnerships seem the way to achieve this.

Our report covers practical insights into key elements of establishing successful developmental partnerships, such as choosing who to involve, and advice on how to nurture these partnerships over time through effective engagement and contracting.

We hope that you will find it useful.