BT and the NHS at 60

Tag : emergency pager

The NHS marked its 60th anniversary on 5 July. Even sixty yearsago, hospitals and GP practices needed communications, and it wasthe General Post Office that provided them with mail andtelephones.
Since then, the GPO’s successors have provided the NHS withever more advanced communications and ICT infrastructure, while itsresearchers have developed ground-breaking communication and livingaids for patients.
Today, BT sits at the heart of the NHS’ biggest ever ITprogramme, which is creating the ICT services that will shape theNHS of the future and enable it to deliver on its original promiseto provide care for all “from the cradle to the grave.”
The Appointed Day
Most of these services could hardly have been imagined on Monday, 5July 1948; the “Appointed Day” on which a new system ofsocial security was created alongside a new National HealthService.
From the start, the GPO provided the NHS with telephone services,while its scientists helped to develop and then produce the firsthearing aid to be truly available to all.
The Medresco hearing aid (named after the Medical Research Council,which held an inquiry into hearing aid design and cost as thegovernment made plans for the new health service) worked on thesame principles as a telephone, with amplified sound feedingstraight into the ear.
Commercial hearing aids were beyond the financial reach of mostfamilies, so it is hardly surprising that a survey of 1,000patients in 1951 found that “more than half were enthusiasticand 83 per cent approved” of the new service.
Despite this, the GPO’s Research Establishment continued toinnovate, producing smaller aids, aids for children and aids thatcould be used with telephones for more than quarter of a century.
Austerity and the swinging 60s
The 1950s were years of austerity, and investment in the telephonenetwork was severely curtailed. However, the GPO still managed tobring telephones to the bedsides of hospital patients – onthe trolleys that were a feature of NHS wards for many years.
In the 1960s, its researchers turned their attention to patientsparalysed by polio and spinal cord injuries. They developed“patient operated selector mechanisms” – orpossums – which allowed patients with very little movement tooperate communications devices by sucking and blowing on a tube.
The first telecommunications revolution
Then in the 1970s, both the NHS and what now became British Telecomwere re-organised and given more independence from Whitehall. Atthe same time, telecommunications underwent a revolution. Oneinnovation was radio-paging, which BT steadily rolled out to majorBritish cities.
Hospitals, GPs and emergency services all benefited. One GP inBirmingham described how carrying a pager allowed him to“shop, visit friends or go for a walk while on call”– while remaining just a “bleep” away frompatients in an emergency.
In 1985, BT gave free radio-pagers to the NHS so that 250 patientswaiting for organ transplants could be contacted immediately aheart, lung or other organ had become available.
Meanwhile, technological advances such as the introduction offibre-optic cables allowed telephone networks to carry more trafficand new data services to be developed. One of these was Prestel,which was used to make health information more widely availablethan it had been before.
However Prestel had some limitations and the widespread take-up ofnew data services had to wait until the Internet and mobilerevolution of the 1990s. When it arrived, BT was in the forefrontof taking its benefits to the NHS.
The internet revolution
BT developed the first NHS-wide communications networks to enablehospitals, GPs and other organisations to easily send messages toeach other, and to deliver faster test results, referrals and otherbenefits for patients as a result.
It also set up the first, secure, NHS-wide email service, and, asthe NHS celebrated its 50th anniversary, one of the first NHSwebsites: nhs50. Ministers described the site as “asignificant step in the drive to modernise the health service andtake advantage of IT.”
Another significant innovation for patients was the creation, in1999, of the nurse-led telephone helpline, NHS Direct, for which BTprovided telecommunications and support for its website, NHS DirectOnline.
By the turn of the century, it was clear to the government, the NHSand the public that a modern health service could not operatewithout state of the art information and communications technology.
BT is now at the heart of the NHS’ biggest ever IT programme,the National Programme for IT in the NHS, which was set up in 2002to further improve connectivity and to lay the foundations forfaster, more convenient services for patients.
It has already delivered a new broadband network to the NHS, knownas N3, and helped to lay the foundations for the NHS Care RecordsService.
Summary care records are already allowing authorised clinicians inpilot areas to look up vital details about a patient’smedical history before treating them. Meanwhile, BT is installingnew IT systems and services to NHS organisations across London.
Challenges for the future
And it is continuing to look ahead to the challenges that thehealth service will face in the future. The first babies to be borninto the NHS 60 years ago will retire this year and start to growold over the next two decades.
BT scientists at Adastral Park, the successor to the GPO’sResearch Establishment, have been working on telehealth andtelecare services that will increasingly help these aging“baby boomers” to monitor their own wellbeing, and liveindependently and safely in homes kitted out with intelligentmedical sensors and alarms.
Since the NHS was set up, the service and the technology used tosupport and deliver it have changed dramatically; but BT has beenat the forefront of innovation and at the heart of plans to turninnovation into mainstream NHS practice.
Some ideas have gone nowhere, some have meant painful change, andsome advances that were ground-breaking in their time may seemmundane today. But over six decades, both the NHS and BT have beenable to harness technology to do things that were barely imaginedin 1948. They should be able to do even more in the future.
A version of this feature was commissioned by BT to mark itsinvolvement with the NHS over 60 years. More information isavailable at: www.btplc.com/Health/MediaandIndustry/NHS60