Health innovation and COVID-19 pandemic: Defining the need and response.

A question heard on the wards recently – how can we capture all the innovations that have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic? I’m sure that there are similar questions in hospitals, GP surgeries and other organisations across the world.
In order to answer this question we need to start by defining innovation. The World Health Organization (which might want to drop the American spelling in light of recent political decisions) defines health innovation as follows:

“Health innovation is to develop new or improved health policies, systems, products and technologies, and services and delivery methods that improve people’s health, with a special focus on the needs of vulnerable populations.

• WHO engages in health innovation in the context of universal health coverage
• Health innovation adds value in the form of improved efficiency, effectiveness, quality, safety and/or affordability
• Health innovation can be in preventive, promotive, therapeutic, rehabilitative and/or assistive care”

In classic Public Health style WHO identifies 3 overlapping domains necessary to capture health innovation fully – science innovation (R&D), social innovation, and business innovation – each of which we can see in evidence in the wider pandemic response.

This is a useful definition for a number of reasons:

Continue reading “Health innovation and COVID-19 pandemic: Defining the need and understanding the response.” →

A first year medical school report by Kirsty Mackenzie, University of Dundee, written as part of a Student Selected Component (SSC) on Human Factors (March 2018). This is also available as a PDF.

Introduction

Over the past century and particularly over the last few decades, there has been a huge shift in the way in which patients interact with doctors. In the past, patients were given very little information about their conditions or their treatments. Medicine was very paternalistic and there was little room for patients to question the doctor’s decisions or to make choices for themselves. The public had very little scientific knowledge and blindly agreed to treatments that may not have needed or wanted(1). This was not in the best interests of patients because they had no control over their own health and this must have left them feeling less content and more anxious about what they were going through. The old model of ‘doctor knows best’ has in recent times been put aside in favour of ‘person-centred care’. The Royal College of Nursing states ‘[Person centred care] means that the person is an equal partner in the planning of care and that his or her opinions are important and are respected(2).’ This term was first coined by the psychotherapist Carl Rogers building on earlier ideas proposed by healthcare workers. Further building on Rogers’ ideas, the psychiatrist George Engel promoted ‘the move from a medical to a biopsychosocial the move from a medical to a biopsychosocial model of health(3).’ His ideas have been widely credited with being responsible for the shift in the model of care.

Continue reading “The Role of Patient Information Leaflets in the Treatment of Patients” →