Healthcare Technology Featured Article

April 14, 2014

UK Healthcare System Embraces Videoconferencing


The real victory for any technological advancement is when it is used to improve the lives of people and society at large. This is exactly what is likely to happen to the U.K. healthcare system as Prime Minister David Cameron announced a new move where doctors and patients can use video-conferencing applications like Skype, emails or even phones to see more patients during the week and weekends.

This is likely to cost over $3 million for the government and is expected to meet the demands of more than seven million patients spread across 1,100 practices.

The new scheme comes at a time when millions of patients have to wait a week or longer to see their doctor. This wait stems from an increasing demand from a growing population that is not met with enough trainee doctors, as many doctors are sent to hospital medicine instead of general practice.

As a result of this wait, the Accident and Emergency (A&E) is under a lot of stress. In fact, this department had the worst performance last year because people who could not get an appointment with their respective GP went into A&E.

To ease the pressure on the A&E department and to improve the quality of healthcare service offered to patients, Cameron announced this latest plan which will also assist 800,000 senior citizens who will now have a named general practioner who will be available for appointments on the same-day.

Despite these efforts, there is a lot of skepticism surrounding the move for several reasons. Firstly, there is a possibility that the new surgeries are scheduled at the cost of availability for the neediest and the sickest patients. Secondly, there will still be about 7,000 general practices that will not get any funding.




Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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