Manchester Informatics held a panel discussion, during Day Four of Policy week, about how technological innovation can help shape health policy and deliver joined up health and social care solutions.

The event was chaired by Carmel Dickinson the Programme Manager of Manchester Informatics. Panellists at the event included: John Ainsworth Deputy Director of the Centre for Health Informatics at the University of Manchester; Dr Amir Hannan a GP and Information and Technology Management Lead for the Tameside & Glossop CCG Board; and Dr Anne Talbot a GP and Associate Medical Director for NHS England, Greater Manchester.

The event explored how the Manchester Connected Health Ecosystem has utilised disruptive technology with a focus on empowering patients and how the model has been upscaled and replicated globally.

Dr Hannan began with a talk about allowing patients access to their patient records, a project that his practice, the Haughton Thornley Medical Centre in Hyde, has trialled for the past ten years. He discussed a term of his own coining, how healthcare is in need of #empowerlution: a mix between evolution and revolution.

Dr Talbot focused her talk on Devo Manc and how an integrated approach to healthcare and social care can deliver both optimum results and return on investment. She explained a real time dashboard tool being used in Bolton to monitor health care within the GP practice and across healthcare providers, and how it turns real time data into knowledge which the practice uses to monitor changes. Talbot described how the tool can use data to track the delivery of optimum care.

John Ainsworth finished the session with an overview of his work at the Centre for Health Informatics, describing how data can be turned into meaningful knowledge. He introduced the centre’s latest pilot project, Connected Health North. Ainsworth also touched upon the length of time it takes for innovation in health care to become embedded into practice and suggested that technology, especially mobile telephones with their high computing power, might disrupt this lengthy uptake process.

Manchester Informatics can be found on Twitter @Man_Inf.