Will technology improve health and health care?

Over the last 9 months, I’ve been investigating the future of health and health care and the interplay with technology. Health care is not alone in looking to technology to improve the future – many other industries are doing this too. The increasing role for technology in our daily lives presents two ways of looking at how we can improve health: by changing our living environment so that it better supports a healthy lifestyle, and by changing how we operate within that environment.

How technology is changing our living environment

There seems to be a growing appreciation that different elements of our life – such as education, health, work and living standards – are interconnected.  This is now being taken in to consideration in the design of towns and cities across the UK. ‘Smart Cities’ (cities with a ‘quality of life’ focused governance, investing in innovations and infrastructure for social purpose) are set to improve health through, for example, smart air quality monitoring to reduce exposure to harm and biometric sensors to support population level management of conditions. Smart cities provide direct benefit in preventing and treating disease, and indirect benefit in creating an ambient environment that improves psychological health. Peterborough’s Circular City (pooling together local knowledge to help reuse resources) and Manchester’s City Verve (testing better services in transport, energy, culture and health) are just two UK cities looking to foreign models, like Singapore, for inspiration.

Holidaying in Singapore in March, it came as no surprise that they were the pioneers of the congestion charge to reduce air pollution. More recently, the city invested in Gardens by the Bay, encouraging outdoor living. But Singapore is a city-nation, the size of Manchester. Is it feasible to recreate the benefits of smart cities across the UK? Not least given the variance across the country in socio-economic opportunity that has led to differences in life expectancy by 8 years.

How we operate in the environment

Technology and data go hand-in-hand. Where health is concerned, data is a trepid subject and patient security is key. Many technologies featured on the Innovation Learning Network (an online community providing support for those working to innovate in health care, free for NHS staff) showcase this. One example is Chronicle, allowing COPD patients to determine which walking routes in their city will be least taxing to their condition. This is done by users sharing data of their experiences on walking routes to help make predictions for other users, based on each user’s individual condition. The reward of sharing data and the security of data in the future is paramount in light of scandals of data sharing, so people aren’t afraid of their data being leaked or shared inappropriately.

As well as the data question, our day-to-day lives are set to be changed drastically by automation. The Oxford Martin School have reported on the probability of computerisation of over 700 different jobs, highlighting the need to educate and skill future generations to help facilitate this automation and provide insight that artificial intelligence can’t.

As an example of this, I found out that a voluntary role I had at Manchester Royal Infirmary could now be automated. Assisting visitors to wards can be performed by 3-foot tall robots like Savioke, and helping stroke victims to rehabilitate through hand massages could be performed by soft-robotics in glove form! This only adds to existing use of robotics within health care, such as the Japanese using robotic seals like PARO to care for dementia patients. Our forthcoming project on automation in primary care with the Oxford Martin School will explore this field further.

But will technology deliver its promise?

The ‘en-vogue’ approach to creating good health in the future aspires to freeing ourselves of mundane tasks and inconveniences – filling out tax returns, putting the dishes away – alleviating us of these ‘depressing’ functions and engaging with technology and our surrounding environment to better care for our wellbeing. A friend however recently taught me of the motivational trifecta, that in life we need three things: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Does technology empower or supress us as motivated, happy individuals? Can technology actually improve our psychological health in improving health and health care?

To reap the benefits of data and get scale on automation will require a unified vision, in which corporations and government bodies around the world create best practice. However, there may also be a benefit from thinking more locally, growing communities through smart cities and possibly the beginning of ‘smart counties’ to improve health directly and indirectly.

Ultimately, to directly and indirectly change health, we can’t avoid technology as we have already become so accustomed to it. But to what extent are we willing to work with technology in the future for it to give us what we want?

Tanuj Agaarwal (@tansthoughts) worked at the Health Foundation as an intern, investigating the changing face of health with technology