Doubts raised over safety of ‘doctor by broadband’
Patients could be put at risk by using internet-based equipment to manage their conditions from home, the lead investigator of a nationwide trial into the technology has warned.
Ministers are keen to push ‘telehealth’ – where people with chronic conditions help manage their own conditions from home – but there are questions over safety.
Ministers are keen to push ‘telehealth’ – where people with chronic conditions help manage their own conditions from home – but there are questions over safety.
Stephen Adams
By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent
3:01PM BST 30 Aug 2012
Ministers are keen to push the benefits of telehealth, in which people with long term conditions like diabetes and heart disease submit readings to doctors and nurses online.
Paul Burstow, the Care Services Minister, said in March that telecare could save the NHS £1.7 billion by 2017, if three million used it.
But now Adam Steventon, the lead investigator behind the England-wide trial of the project, called the Whole System Demonstrator, has expressed doubts over safety.
He told Pulse magazine: “A study done very recently which looked at patients with multiple chronic conditions that found that more deaths were associated with telehealth than the control group.”
The Whole System Demonstrator is actually a composite of many different trials, each looking at its effect in a different clinical area. They are ongoing.
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Mr Steventon, from the Nuffield Trust, said these sub-trials had come back with different results.
Regarding the trial in people with multiple chronic conditions, he continued: “There must be some caution to try and understand why telehealth has this effect in this setting and the opposite in another setting – how can we avoid the negative consequences of rolling out telehealth nationally.”
A Department of Health spokesman said as a whole the WSD trial provided the evidence to support roll-out – a point of view not uniformly shared by doctors. Some have complained that not all the data are being made available.
However, the spokesman said: “It shows that changes in utilisation are a reality and mortality can be significantly improved as well as care being better planned.”
