The future of healthcare in the UK

COVID-19 — the pandemic that struck across all our borders and has disrupted life as we knew it. It’s been cited as a reason why you can’t go out to the cinema, why you can’t visit friends, and why you should stay at home and isolate.

Despite being under immense pressure, healthcare providers in the UK have implemented digital transformation at an unprecedented pace. Previous “reasons why not” have vanished into thin air and have been replaced with a decisiveness driven purely by necessity. The UK, like all other countries, needs its healthcare system to operate effectively in order to manage the spread of this virus.

In addition to this the system (by which I mean the NHS) has been in a precarious position financially for quite some time. If you combine this with the relentless rise in expectations created by the consumerisation of healthcare, you’ve got the start of some revolutionary transformations in the UK, which will nearly all feature technology as the primary enabler. This in turn should improve the patient experience — both directly and indirectly — and reduce the costs of delivering healthcare to those who need it.

Wearable and smart technology, such as Apple Watch, blood pressure monitoring and non-invasive glucose monitoring is becoming more prevalent and is predicted to grow significantly over the coming years. When used in conjunction with analytics at a large scale, the impact on predictive, preventative healthcare could be vast. The global market for wearable and smart technology has already risen at an unprecedented rate. One of the key market sectors for this category of apps and hardware is health and fitness.

According to the Kings Fund, the greatest opportunity to reduce the burden of chronic disease is from a change in population lifestyle supported by more effective chronic disease management and secondary prevention measures. The evidence shows that smartphones, tablets, wearable technology and their associated apps and data are having a dramatic impact on our lifestyles and behaviours. Therefore, by levering this position through the provision of technology-enabled solutions, it may be possible to positively impact health trends, as well as the focus and approach of healthcare practice.

Jamf is ideally positioned to be part of this revolution by helping healthcare providers succeed with Apple. Jamf’s Healthcare Solutions can enable patient care at its best. To find out more about the project at Oxford Health, download the latest case study.