The focus of modern healthcare is around lifestyle issues
such as obesity and diabetes. Picture: PA
Published on the 16 April 2014
Patients can be taught self-care, says Grant Cumming
A new building named the Alexander Graham Bell Centre,
located on the campus of Moray College UHI in Elgin, will be officially opened
in June to further the pioneering work already being done in the area on
digital healthcare or e-health. Detailed attention has been paid to the
internal architecture because the centre’s purpose is to bring together – and
create a flow of ideas between – people working in digital healthcare in the
public and private sectors as well as medics, social workers and academics.
Drawing on the “social physics” ideas of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, professor Alex Pentland, among others, the centre will
be a hub for developing new and innovative ways of providing healthcare using
information and communication technology (ICT).
Social physics outlines how human behaviour is driven by the
exchange of ideas and learning from each other. It also identifies how large
amounts of very specific data available on the internet through different types
of computer technology can be used to help this process.
For example, one in four people in Moray consults the
internet prior to visiting their GP, giving doctors an insight into the value
of highlighting credible sources of information to
patients which
might allow them to look after themselves.
We can no longer afford to deliver healthcare under the
existing model. Our system was built to deal with infection and while we will
always have infection, the focus of modern healthcare is around lifestyle
issues such as obesity and diabetes.
The traditional model is reactive when we need to be
concentrating much more on preventative and personalised medicine – we need new
ideas on how we engage with a person and their wellbeing throughout their life
and that is what the centre is there to generate.
In part, the challenge is subtly to alter the behaviour of
patients.
As well as Alex Pentland’s, the work of behavioural economists Richard Thaler
and Cass Sunstein on nudging people to take action and that of psychologist
Daniel Kahneman, whose global bestseller Thinking Fast and Slow contrasts fast,
instinctive and emotional thinking with slower, more logical thinking in human
decision-making, has been influential.
We can teach people to look after themselves. We need an
element of nudging – persuading people to take action, for example by
highlighting the dangers of smoking. We also need budging – making people take
action, for example the ban on smoking in public spaces. We can use information
and new technology, perhaps even gaming, to create, for instance, a fun way to
exercise to get a message over to some groups.
The internet is now a social web where we can order goods
and interact with people, where information within documents can be linked and
disparate databases mined for more information.
We must look at how we can connect and collaborate and use
that technology to improve the delivery of healthcare, and where better to
develop that format than here in Moray?
Moray has already won global recognition for its excellence
in the field of digital health, hosting a World Health Organisation conference
on the subject in 2012. And two of the four projects in the UK to have received
substantial funding under the DALLAS (Delivering Assisted Living Lifestyle at
Scale) scheme are in Moray.
They are:
n Year Zero, an online application which enables people to
manage their health information and includes an online family tree, a digital
version of the red book that is given to all parents to record their child’s
health and Rally Round, a social networking and planning tool to connect
family, friends, carers and health and care professionals.
n Living It Up, which uses connected TVs to give people
access to health and community information within their own homes. Moray is the
test bed area for the project.
It is hoped that the Alexander Graham Bell Centre will
further enhance the area’s reputation for digital healthcare.The centre has conference facilities, eight classrooms,
custom-built corridor learning pods for students, a community hub and café. It also has a mock hospital ward, a resuscitation training
room, research facilities and space for new enterprises.
The whole place will be a melting pot for ideas, a safe
space in which we hope we will be able to redesign how we deliver healthcare.
• The £6.5 million Alexander Graham Bell Centre has been
funded by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Moray College UHI, NHS Grampian and
the European Regional Development Fund.
Professor Grant Cumming,
Consultant Obstetrician
and Gynaecologist, Dr Gray’s Hospital, Elgin is one of the medical
professionals behind the creation of the centre.
