ALL 44 regional NHS bodies will propose to meet strict five-year savings targets by increasing the use of new digital technologies to deliver health services.

Although Gloucestershire’s Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) is very short on detail and gives no information on how they intend to change health services, unlike many other regional NHS bodies, it is clear that those bodies around the country are moving towards a model labelled “self-care”.

While I support the careful use of new technology I believe, with so many others who know much more than I do, that the move away from face-to-face contact in a doctor’s surgery will see patients’ ailments missed.

Caroline Molloy, editor of Our NHS, says “I have seen people who are strong advocates of this sort of thing admit they are worried. As soon as you are not seeing someone in a room in front of you, you are losing out on their skin colour, their smell, whether they are looking after themselves properly. The real thing they (the GPs) worry about comes from a lack of human interaction.”

Chris Moulton, the vice-president at the Royal College of Emergency Medicine believes types of preventative treatment are, “absolutely the morally and medically correct thing to do” but he went on to warn that the regional NHS bodies must not use new technology as a way of saving money, which seems to be the case and scientists at the University of York said that a trial of mood-monitoring therapy software, where patients update a system with how they are feeling at a given time, showed it offered, “little or no benefit over usual GP care” as many patients were not willing to log in of their own accord.

Helen Stokes-Lampard, chair of the Royal College of GPs, believes video links could increase a GP’s workload.

She says: “A 10- minute patient consultation takes 10 minutes whether face-to-face or over the phone, and in some cases virtual consultations can increase workload if a follow-up face-to-face consultation is necessary”.

We now have one million old people in our country who do not see anyone for a month.

I am really concerned that what the STPs call “algorithmic decision support tools” will increase that number and that we should proceed with care to ensure that the NHS is using these life-changing technologies not to save money but to ensure that health care is improved.

Turning our backs on change is not a way forward, but realising GPs and hospitals are dealing with people who sometimes need face-to-face care should be kept in mind.

Brian Oosthuysen

Stroud