How doctors are turning smartphones into surgeries with video appointments and assessment via text

Put a doctor in your pocket with these medical apps, says Rachael Sigee  
Rachael Sigee25 February 2016

It's 2.10pm on a Tuesday afternoon and I’m video-calling my GP from my office. I made the appointment five minutes ago and I’m back at my desk within a quarter of an hour, advice on board and a prescription winging its way to my local pharmacy.

I’m trialling the “digital doctor” service Babylon Health, one of several new healthcare apps that are picking up steam in the world of tech start-ups: in January, it received $25 million (nearly £18 million) of investment, including backing from the founders of Google’s AI division DeepMind, and this month the Government announced a £4.2 billion investment in digital innovation for the NHS.

Many of the services being developed are trying to tackle the problem of access to primary care — those lengthy GP appointment waiting times that keep hitting the headlines.

When we can get same-day deliveries and taxis in minutes using our phones the process of seeing a doctor does seem somewhat archaic, especially for people working full-time with long commutes who often end up either choosing to ignore potential problems or using out-of-hours services such as walk-in clinics and A&E.

Subscribing to Babylon costs £4.99 per month and allows unlimited GP appointments, access to your electronic records and an “Ask” service for questions by text.

Babylon app

Beyond this, paid-for features include specialist consultations, therapy sessions and tests that are sent to your home. The argument is that most of us don’t need physical examinations; we need efficient diagnostic advice.

Pick-up has been particularly high with male patients, pregnant women and people seeking mental health treatment, and there have been more than 300,000 downloads since the service launched around a year ago.

The rising popularity of Fitbits and health-monitoring apps means Londoners are more in control of our own health than ever, and more comfortable using phones to supplement healthcare. A PwC report this month showed that one in four people would be willing to consult their GP via their smartphone.

Dr Adrian Bull is managing director of Imperial College Health Partners, which is part of DigitalHealth.London, a network hub set up to build a viable marketplace for health tech entrepreneurs and to establish engagement with the NHS and health sector. He believes that the widespread use of services like these is not far away.

“These things will never replace a clinical physical examination,” he says. “But in five years, if a doctor wants to listen to your heart via your phone, they will be able to, and it will be more accurate than a stethoscope. We must never let technology become a barrier or a hurdle between patient and clinician but insofar as these technologies can open up a new channel of communication, making it cleaner, faster, simpler — that’s terrific.”

Currently these services — other examples include Push Doctor and Vitality GP — are available to private patients, whether as individuals or through workplace schemes, but Babylon is also being trialled by the NHS in Essex.

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The Babylon pool of doctors are former NHS GPs who still work at least one day a week in a surgery. Founder Dr Ali Parsa says: “The GPs providing our service are saying the same things to both patients using the service and in their surgeries — only about one in 10 patients need further investigation, perhaps a test. In the same day a patient can ask a question, book a consultant and see a specialist. Even with the most expensive private healthcare in the world they couldn’t do things that quickly, simply because of the logistics.”

Another service, launched in December, again by former NHS GPs, is i-GP. It asks users to fill out an assessment which uses an advanced clinical algorithm to ask further questions depending on the patients’ answers before analysing if they could be treated without visiting a doctor in person.

Founder Dr Sukhbinder Noorpuri says: “We have a good insight into patient needs and demands. We understand there are limits and you can’t treat everybody and that’s why we have a filter system.”

But the healthcare technology sector is not just dealing with problems around primary care. The future of this sector could see technology that monitors how patients use medication — containers designed with a mechanism which sends a signal to both doctor and patient confirming that tablets have been taken. Remote sensoring devices, which a patient wears on a troublesome joint, could analyse the problem and lead to a quicker, more accurate diagnosis. And sensors that monitor blood sugar or chemical levels could automatically drive responses to balance those levels.

To people who still think a visit to the doctor means a waiting room, thermometers and a friendly GP who has known you since you were born peering into your ear, the digital healthcare revolution might sound worrying, inefficient and even scary. But as Dr Parsa points out: “This is how we live now. When is the last time you went to a bank? Did you even know there is a job called ‘bank manager’? Do you know the name of yours?”

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