back to article Docs and devs: Health secretary wants healthcare apps

Health secretary Andrew Lansley has launched a call for new ideas for health apps to help patients make informed decisions about their care. The invitation is open to healthcare professionals and app developers. Lansley cited an existing example of what could be done, the Choosing Well app developed by NHS Yorkshire and Humber …

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  1. dogged
    Thumb Down

    "We will not be announcing any funding"

    trans: Please do work for us for nothing.

    1. Tom Wood

      Presumably

      devs are free to charge for their apps, have advertising etc.

      It could be good PR if you are a developer of an app that could already be considered to be health-related. There's a number of excellent fitness apps that presumably also qualify.

  2. Elmer Phud
    WTF?

    And they wonder why kids helped themselves to phones?

    Lansley is still a tosser it seems.

    We are encouraged to get yet another app as we are now incapable of existing without them but some of us don't have a device capable of hosting an app.

    Lansely --where's my bloody phone first? I can't afford a nice HTC to play with.

    It looks like that in order to stop being a nuisance and bother my GP I'm going to have to get in touch with my youth -well, a local one - and see if there are any special offers going.

    It used to be that everyone had to have a PC and broadband, how things have moved on.

    These politicians really do live in a different world to the rest of us.

    1. slhilly

      Weird

      The person who appears to be living in a different world here, Elmer, is you. Of course, lots of people can't afford a smartphone. But there are millions of the damned things in use in the UK, and promoting some good health apps is a perfectly sensible thing to do. In what way would it be better to wait till penetration reached 90% or 95% or 99% or even 50%?

      Sounds like you were just looking for an excuse to moan, tbh.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How about an app that...

    ... automatically fires grossly incompetent ministers? That'd get rid of Lansley, Osborne, Cable, Alexander, May, Cunt, Clegg, Cameron, etc and save the country a whole whack of money while simultaneously improving dramatically peoples' mental well-being at the same time.

  4. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Flame

    Now call me old-fashioned...

    But I don't want apps, I don't particularly want 'choice', I want bloody treatment.

    Stop messing around and get some doctors and nurses on the wards. Stop pretending that triage by a doctor instead of a nurse followed by a three hour wait, or defining corridors with trolleys on as wards, are a sensible way to meet pointless targets.

    There's plenty of useful things a middle manager can be doing, I'm sure; bound to be lots of places that aren't being cleaned properly because you've employed minimum salary folk with no interest in the job to tick the boxes...

    1. slhilly

      You definitely *are* old-fashioned

      It was moaning from people like you that persuaded Lansley to *abandon* targets that you think were unimportant and that had been brought in by the Labour government. The effect remains to be seen, but there's not a business in the world that doesn't define and track key metrics, even at the expense of some perverse behaviour and gaming, so I personally doubt that it's going to be helpful.

      As for not particularly wanting choice, just stop and think about what you are saying. You are saying you are happy having no choice. What if you had no choice but to use a local hospital where treatment is like it was in mid-Staffs a few years ago? Or a GP who has been dismissive of your concerns when you saw them? How is that a good thing?

  5. Peter Fox
    Thumb Down

    Joke

    So let's just assume Lansely's wonderful offer attracts submissions. Will that mean my 'cure cancer by twitter' app will get a "NHS seal of approval". If not then why not? Otherwise what's the point. If it does get 'approved' then how rigorous will the approvals process be. - Answers on a postcard.

  6. Graham Bartlett

    @Neil Barnes

    Too right.

    I remember last year when MRSA particularly hit the headlines and hospitals got extra money for doing a "deep clean". What didn't get enough publicity was that if food production companies were using the same cleaning methods as hospitals (dirty water in a dirty bucket with a dirty mop), those food production companies would have been shut down. Hygiene is a solved problem - but it's a solved problem that requires a certain level of professionalism, training and equipment.

    I don't want much. I don't mind paying extra for optional treatments like plastic surgery. I don't mind paying extra for a private room if I happen to want one. Hell, I wouldn't even mind paying extra for having a high-risk lifestyle (as an ex-hang-glider and ex-rock-climber). People seem to forget that the NHS isn't there to do *everything* for you treatment-wise, only to guarantee a decent minimum level of care. But we *do* want a decent minimum level of care. And we do *not* want to come out of hospital in a worse state than we went in as a result of failures by the hospital staff.

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