EHealth: The way forward?

Delyth James describes eHealth as 'the technology that really enables us to work differently in health and social care.' With the Covid-19 pandemic, this technology has only become more and more needed, video calls with doctors and new equipment being in high demand, eHealth is the way forward when it comes to healthcare.

Delyth is the Programme Manager at Digital Health Ecosystem Wales, one of the pilots that they are currently supporting is the technology that enables people to take charge of their own health and wellbeing. The technology enables patients to monitor their heart rate through an app on their phone, this allows them to also see what their medication is doing for them which 'makes them much more likely to keep taking it.'

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While this is all great news, technology is complicated, and it seems that the people who would need eHealth technology the most won't necessarily know how to utilize it.

'We just really need to ensure that those people who aren't able to, for whatever reason, access digital health care opportunities, don't receive a second class service. People still need to be supported, and have alternative options to be able to access services and information so that they to, you know, remain active participants in their health and wellbeing tasks as well, you know, they might lack skills or the confidence to currently use technology or engage in service redesign and new ways of we're using our digital tools'.

eHealth is growing and changing alongside technology and the world. As long as people can access the correct tools and can be shown the way to utilise them, there are few limits as to where the technology could lead.

Listen to the full episode here.