Kersten England, chief executive of Bradford council said the NHS is a huge success story but the “model is broken” and digital healthcare businesses are essential for patient empowerment, reported the Yorkshire Post.
England chairs the digital strategy boards for the Leeds City Region. At the Leeds Digital Festival, England said: “The system is over its carrying capacity. Accident and emergency departments are stacking up. Wards are full of people who should be discharged and can’t be discharged.
“Health inequality has never been greater. Life expectancy is dramatically different for people from different socio-economic groups and we have a system that is geared to treat disease and patients, not a system that is geared to deliver wellbeing.
“We have to shift that agenda upstream to create wellbeing and prevent ill health and then support people who are living with long-term conditions to be in control and be able to manage that largely without acute, urgent intervention.”
Leeds has 3,500 health and social care companies, a digital infrastructure, data expertise and university research but according to England, these need to be promoted “more coherently”.
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