Have to say it makes one a little queasy to see the Secretary of State take the platform at a competitor HQ and tell they world he wants their product to be offered to everyone. Taking a few shortcuts on procurement, open competition, evidence and so on, but then he’s new.
Two things I share with Matt Hancock are his enthusiasm for how technology can help, and his frustration with the glacial rate of innovation adoption in the NHS (plenty of innovation does not equal high rate of adoption).
But we absolutely must see technology within the whole system context, which is why we call what we do “Systems thinking applied to general practice.”
– their patient profile is skewed to younger adults
– they’ve traded access for discontinuity of care
– their exclusions, agreed by NHS England, cover children, pregnancy, many chronic conditions, those who can’t travel, pretty much most of the demand on GPs.
– taking out the above patients leaves remaining GPs with most of the work but much less of the income.
He’s right that a quick query on an acute illness from the back of the ministerial Jag could and should be dealt with online (if appropriate) by the patient’s own NHS GP. But from the GP side, that’s a very small segment of demand.
I fear a sinister side to the Babylon gig on Thursday: BMJ reports that Ali Parsa is lobbying NHS England not to cut funding for “digital first” GP providers out of area. Well he would say that, but having the SoS publicly tout your product is quite a nice negotiating gambit.
We aren’t just going to rail at the darkness. It would be lovely to have the endorsement of the SoS but until then, we’ll let the evidence talk.
Practices running askmyGP serve about 8 times as many NHS patients as GP at Hand.
Last week they did 6,600 online requests, probably 3 times as many as GP at Hand (and twice as many as eConsult, who claim 500 practices now to our couple of dozen)
All patients had a choice of their own GP.
They are digital first but never digitally exclusive – patients are able to use the channel that works for them.
They get a faster service than Babylon can do, response in minutes and face to face same day.
No patients are excluded from the GP list or turned away.
Call it disruptive innovation if you wish, but we’re disrupting the operating model, not the business or contracting model. That’s why GPs love it.
Parsa announced on Thursday another $100million investment into his company to be spent on AI, on top of the $60m already sunk. I don’t know whether this has been systematically reviewed, but it couldn’t recognise my fungal toenail infection. More seriously, @DrMurphy11 has shown how it misses a “barn door PE”.
I’m announcing today a secret weapon in askmyGP. We call it HI. It’s used for every single clinical diagnosis and decision, and even better, it does care. It can care for any patient, even one deaf, blind, lame, foreign, depressed and pregnant all at once. It understands context, nuance, subtlety, ambiguity, the importance of relationships. It even takes responsibility.
We work with over 100 GPs and I can tell you, each one is worth well over $1million. So much we can’t measure it.
Something else you need to know about GP at Hand, which is why they worry so much about funding per patient. Their Achilles heel is operating costs, sky high, compared with regular partnerships offering digital first. Drop me an email to find out how we know.
Our mission is to enable regular local GPs to outcompete Babylon, online, on quality, service and profitability. We’re showing how any practice can do it. We’re growing multiple times faster than GP at Hand, adding another 20,000 patients this week.
Someone will notice before long. A GP copied me yesterday her invite to Mr Hancock to come and see askmyGP in action.
Game on, Babylon.
Harry Longman
PS A North East practice launched two weeks ago and has already blown my socks off as well as its own. They’ve gone from a median 5 day wait to see a GP to median completed request in 70 minutes, and demand went down in week 2.
One of their 91 year old patients commented, “Excellent, this service should have come earlier”
Game on, Babylon
Have to say it makes one a little queasy to see the Secretary of State take the platform at a competitor HQ and tell they world he wants their product to be offered to everyone. Taking a few shortcuts on procurement, open competition, evidence and so on, but then he’s new.
Two things I share with Matt Hancock are his enthusiasm for how technology can help, and his frustration with the glacial rate of innovation adoption in the NHS (plenty of innovation does not equal high rate of adoption).
But we absolutely must see technology within the whole system context, which is why we call what we do “Systems thinking applied to general practice.”
Mr Hancock might like to consider a few matters before handing over the jewel in the NHS crown to Babylon’s GP at Hand:
– their patient profile is skewed to younger adults
– they’ve traded access for discontinuity of care
– their exclusions, agreed by NHS England, cover children, pregnancy, many chronic conditions, those who can’t travel, pretty much most of the demand on GPs.
– taking out the above patients leaves remaining GPs with most of the work but much less of the income.
He’s right that a quick query on an acute illness from the back of the ministerial Jag could and should be dealt with online (if appropriate) by the patient’s own NHS GP. But from the GP side, that’s a very small segment of demand.
I fear a sinister side to the Babylon gig on Thursday: BMJ reports that Ali Parsa is lobbying NHS England not to cut funding for “digital first” GP providers out of area. Well he would say that, but having the SoS publicly tout your product is quite a nice negotiating gambit.
We aren’t just going to rail at the darkness. It would be lovely to have the endorsement of the SoS but until then, we’ll let the evidence talk.
Call it disruptive innovation if you wish, but we’re disrupting the operating model, not the business or contracting model. That’s why GPs love it.
Parsa announced on Thursday another $100million investment into his company to be spent on AI, on top of the $60m already sunk. I don’t know whether this has been systematically reviewed, but it couldn’t recognise my fungal toenail infection. More seriously, @DrMurphy11 has shown how it misses a “barn door PE”.
I’m announcing today a secret weapon in askmyGP. We call it HI. It’s used for every single clinical diagnosis and decision, and even better, it does care. It can care for any patient, even one deaf, blind, lame, foreign, depressed and pregnant all at once. It understands context, nuance, subtlety, ambiguity, the importance of relationships. It even takes responsibility.
We work with over 100 GPs and I can tell you, each one is worth well over $1million. So much we can’t measure it.
Something else you need to know about GP at Hand, which is why they worry so much about funding per patient. Their Achilles heel is operating costs, sky high, compared with regular partnerships offering digital first. Drop me an email to find out how we know.
Our mission is to enable regular local GPs to outcompete Babylon, online, on quality, service and profitability. We’re showing how any practice can do it. We’re growing multiple times faster than GP at Hand, adding another 20,000 patients this week.
Someone will notice before long. A GP copied me yesterday her invite to Mr Hancock to come and see askmyGP in action.
Game on, Babylon.
Harry Longman
PS A North East practice launched two weeks ago and has already blown my socks off as well as its own. They’ve gone from a median 5 day wait to see a GP to median completed request in 70 minutes, and demand went down in week 2.
One of their 91 year old patients commented, “Excellent, this service should have come earlier”
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