During the Future Health Technology Summit organised by Digital Jersey, Dr Amir Mehrkar said that digital health programmes around the world had failed to consult the most important people in the development of new technology – the patients – and instead have been driven by the organisations which provide funding.
Earlier this year, the Health Department, the Jersey Primary Care Board and Digital Jersey launched the Digital Health Strategy, the aims of which include connecting together IT systems across all of the different States departments and creating an online portal from which medics and patients can access medical records.
Early next year, the first phase of the programme is expected to be completed, which will for the first time allow GPs to order X-rays and pathology tests from the Hospital via their computer systems.
Dr Mehrkar warned, however, that Jersey must not make the mistake of not involving patients in the development of digital health systems and allowing the projects to be driven ‘behind closed doors’.
‘A lot of projects don’t tend to involve the end user, which is the patient, in driving change,’ he said.
‘It’s always the organisations which have the money or are going to bring in other stakeholders to buy services which are involved.
‘My feedback to you would be that is that patient involvement is the single most important thing to drive a project and nowhere in the world has it been done well so far.’
He added: ‘A lot of [digital health] challenges are dealt with behind closed doors. You are faced with vendors talking to each other and often discussions are just about money.
‘But the public want money to move effectively and the best thing to do is to engage patients.’
Danny Bannister, of Total Solutions Limited, which is helping develop the Digital Health Strategy, admitted that in Jersey patients were not currently involved in the consultation process.
He added, however, that greater patient involvement was an objective of the programme.
