Partner Article

Government pledges £4bn to create a paperless NHS

The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has announced the UK government’s plan to invest £4 billion into improving the use of technology within the NHS. With growing pressure on the organisation to control spiralling costs, the government believes a paperless approach will go a long way in alleviating the tension.

“With ongoing pressure to remove inefficiencies and reduce expenditure, Jeremy Hunt’s plans to invest in digital technology is a great step forward for the NHS,” said Erwane Kernevez, digital solutions director at Neopost. “Created at time when digital technology was not a possibility, a big problem is that too many parts of the NHS continue to rely on out-dated legacy infrastructure. With digital playing such a large role in modern-day communications and processes, it’s surprising such a vital government body has been largely kept in the paper-reliant dark ages for so long. Giving staff the provisions to communicate, and search and retrieve patients’ records digitally, will improve collaboration between customers and departments, which will help alleviate some of the common NHS challenges – patient misunderstandings and waiting times, for example.”

Kernevez continued: “The Government has widely encouraged British businesses to adopt digital technology, so it will be promising to see it lead by example. Whether it be the use of applications or the cloud, technology is empowering businesses to operate more intelligently, cost effectively and work in new ways that would otherwise be unachievable. By removing paper-based systems, the NHS will be making it easier for patients to use its services in a way that best suits them. Manual processes will never be able to compete with digital systems, therefore even beyond the NHS, transitioning traditional methods of working to digital alternatives must be a priority. Failing to recognise this will only lead to businesses struggling to keep up in a world that is primed for faster, more effective, automated processes.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Zinwave .