Q&A with a Healthcare IT sales manager

Karen Senior explains the role that innovations in IT are going to play in enabling the NHS to deliver better healthcare – and what GE Healthcare IT is doing to support the priorities of the NHS
Karen Senior
Karen Senior is the sales manager for GE Healthcare IT UK and Ireland

What are the main challenges facing radiologists in the NHS and how can healthcare IT help?

All healthcare professionals are facing similar challenges at the moment, namely how to increase the quality and efficiency of care provision while also reducing costs. Ultimately this boils down to delivering more with less. This is also a major challenge for qualified radiologists as they are in short supply here in the UK, at a time when hospitals are under pressure to provide 24/7 radiology services to patients.

This is where healthcare IT can help, by giving practitioners access to patient records from anywhere, at any time, enabling them to work more quickly and efficiently. For radiologists in particular it allows individuals to take on cases from multiple locations, share workloads and work remotely. It effectively enables fewer people to do more. In this way, technology can help to drive productivity, achieve better patient outcomes and keep costs down for the NHS.

What are the most exciting technological developments of late — what role will they play to help the NHS deliver better healthcare?

A big focus of technological advancement is to provide greater access to patient information in a way that fits with the drivers for organisational change and evolving working patterns within the NHS. In particular, there is a need for technologies which allow multiple IT systems to connect, so that information from different hospital departments can be shared to give a single view of a patient's records.

In addition, practitioners need to be able to work remotely in a 24/7 world, get quick access to a patient's records and even share data with other clinicians outside the four walls of their hospital to reach a swift and accurate diagnosis. This is where the concept of a Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) comes in, which helps connect and share information across multiple departments, specialties, locations and vendors.

How are things changing with respect to the way that a diagnosis is made by clinicians? What role is IT playing in this?

In the old days a clinician was completely tied to his or her department. Today, with the advent of innovations in IT, they can use remote desktops or mobile devices to access patient images, test results and other information, 24/7. Furthermore they can collaborate very easily with other practitioners remotely, for instance to hold a multi -disciplinary meeting about a case, and this makes the process of diagnosis much quicker and more efficient

What does the future hold and what will be the big focus in 2013?

Healthcare IT is experiencing a relentless pace of change and the future is very exciting. For all of the companies in the healthcare IT space 2013 is going to be all about delivery, ensuring that the new IT solutions they have sold, actually deliver on their promises.

The liberation from the National IT programme has given rise to lots of new IT companies who are hungry to capitalize on the new opportunities to sell their solutions to the NHS. The challenge will be whether they can all actually deliver, and only time will tell.

There are a number of high priority initiatives for 2013 which are going to push healthcare IT right up the NHS agenda – things like interoperability, patient record access, hospitals being paperless by 2015, and patient portals to replace NHS Choices.

The role of technology in shaping the future of healthcare really cannot be underestimated. It is probably going to be the single most influential factor driving the evolution in healthcare over the next few decades.

What does GE have to offer in terms of Healthcare IT in the UK today and how are you helping to address the requirements of the NHS?

GE Healthcare IT has an exceptional blend of clinical depth and IT expertise. We have a breadth of understanding along the care continuum because we are involved in many areas in health from Cell biology and DNA mapping to full body imaging and beyond, and as part of GE, we have a legacy of proven and reliable technology spanning more than 150 years.

We are constantly innovating to meet evolving customer needs and we are investing heavily for the long term, to help our customers improve their workflows, access patient information quickly and collaborate for improved care.

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