Mark Garnier, MP for Wyre Forest and Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Telehealth, chaired the group's first meeting yesterday. The key speaker was Claire Gerada, chair of the Council of Royal College of General Practitioners. She spoke passionately about the use of Telehealth in the NHS and the many benefits it offers.
Telehealth is the delivery of health-related services and information via telecommunications technologies. This can be as simple as a doctor contacting a patient by email or even a patient monitoring his or her own health from home. Information gathered by the patient would then be transmitted, via a Telehealth server, to the local surgery where doctors can access it.
The benefits, championed by both Mark and Clare Gerada, include greater independence for patients, more rapid responses by GPs and greater access to people living in remote communities. The system could also bring large savings to the NHS by reducing the number of hospital admissions, home visits by the GP and the number of appointments at the GP surgery.
The purpose of the APPG is to raise awareness in Parliament about the merits of Telehealth and to encourage the further rollout of Telehealth in the UK.
Mark said "it was a pleasure to host the first meeting which was received extremely enthusiastically by all the participants. This exciting technology will deliver both improved outcomes and improved quality for patients. As such I am confident that it will be one of the defining factors if health in the 21st Century"
The meeting included a wide range of cross party MPs and Peers such as vice chair of the APPG Baroness Masham and the Secretary, Laurence Robertson MP.