Sunday 20 October 2024
The Wes Watch
Millions to receive health-monitoring smartwatches as part of 10-year plan to save NHS
Wearable technology will be used to help people monitor their health, including tracking blood pressure, glucose spikes and how cancer patients are responding to treatment.
It will create a single health record that patients can view through the NHS app.
The move comes as Health Secretary Wes Streeting is set to invite patients and NHS staff to take part in a "national conversation" to shape the government's 10-year plan for the service next week.
Wes Streeting seems to be setting himself apart from his senior Cabinet colleagues. As they play their games of competitive incompetence, Wes seems to have retained a more technocrat focus.
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12 comments:
Have times changed? For years the NHS has operated on a basis of rationing services and treatments to save money; you would only be given monitoring devices if you were already really ill. And now the NHS has become immune to more funding it wants to outsource monitoring to individuals, again to save money in the longer term.
So nothing has changed then. The efforts are all aimed at 'saving the NHS' when really 'reforming the NHS' is required (although against much ingrained resistance).
The conspiract theorists will of course explain that these devices are read and tracked remotely, no doubt by contractors who will supply them, thus providing authorities with info on your location, dietry levels, activity level, sleeping patterns, even who you are with should they also be a recipient, etc.
Given the horrors we see on a regular basis, it's hardly a conspiracy theory. And as for their claims of safe & secure - gimme a break!
DJ - "The efforts are all aimed at 'saving the NHS' when really 'reforming the NHS' is required"
I agree, it's just patching the holes in a sinking ship. Reform is needed, not gadgets.
Woodsy - I think the devices are likely to be tracked remotely as a pandemic and safety feature. There will be conspiracy theories, but they are unlikely to be entirely wrong.
Dave - I agree, bound to be problems including privacy issues.
As Tim Worstall points out, if this scheme works well, it will improve the lives of millions. They'll live longer and healthier.
But what it can't do is save the NHS. Money spent on individuals peaks in the last six months of life, on average. As we all still have to die of something, the cost will be the same. The best way to save the NHS is to lower taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and sugar, to kill people off quickly. A nice heart attack or stroke in your fifties is a cheap way to go. For those closer to the finishing line, I recommend abolishing winter fuel payments. Die at home during a cold spell, save the NHS.
Sam - I'm sure the NHS knows about this dilemma, but nobody in a senior position will tell it as it is. Unless they expect millions of healthier people to end up in care homes, paying for it by selling the house.
Who comes up with these crazy ideas? Don't they realise that the most expensive patients in the NHS are either the very old - who won't have a clue what to do with a smart watch, or the indigent - who will either ignore it or sell it?
I know it's unfair but every time I see his photo I think of him as Stress Wetting.
Peter - it sounds like the starry-eyed enthusiasm of a committee wanting to give the new Minister a helpful headline.
dearieme - which sound like a standard test for waterproof nappies.
Microdave is quite right here … not going near it.
Well I guess there's going to be a lot of cheap fitbits (or the like) on ebay soon then. 'Sorry doctor, I must have lost it somewhere, gissa new one!'
One has to wonder what makes the likes of Wes Streeting think that the sort of people who live chaotic lives and exhibit poor decision making processes regarding health and diet (and indeed everything else) are suddenly going to be turned into model citizens by being given a bit of health tech. I guess its because such people are completely out of their sphere of personal experience. They can't conceive of the sort of person whose first thought on being given one of these watches will be 'How much can I sell it for?' Or that the sort of person who already struggles to manage their way through the complexities of modern society is not going to become an OCD health freak overnight because they get given a smartwatch. Middle class politician/civil servant types of above average intelligence think people will behave the way they would behave in those circumstances, when the reality is that many of the people in these bad health situations are there precisely because of their inability to make good decisions. Give them something else to make decisions about and they'll screw that up too.
James - I won't either, I'll do my own checking if needed.
Sobers - Streeting is an odd one because from the sound of it he came from a rough background, so he ought to see the chaotic lives problem. These gadgets won't only be sold, but also lost, dropped down the toilet, left on in the shower, left in the washing machine and so on.
Maybe knowing about the inability of some to make good decisions leaves him willing to grasp this paternal alternative just as he's grasped paternal politics, or maybe maternal politics.
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