Digital health services: building consumer confidence

At the same time, current or prospective players in the UK digital health market face a number of challenges. The market is crowded, with hundreds of thousands of health apps available. The UK regulatory framework is fragmented and routes to market into the NHS, which for many apps will be crucial to their success, remain unclear.

Consumer attitudes to digital heath are also ambivalent, combining enthusiasm for greater insights into health and wellbeing with caution about privacy, reliability, and bias. Yanis Varoufakis in his book Techno Feudalism comments that it’s part of human nature to be wary of anyone or anything that seems to know us better than we know ourselves. We have little choice but to rely on expert medical knowledge when we are unwell, and we all know from shopping sites how well technology companies can predict our wants and desires. It is therefore unsurprising that digital health can sometimes cause disquiet.

Notably older people tend to have lower confidence in digital health than the general population, but they probably have the greatest capacity to benefit from self-management of long-term conditions.

In the absence of well recognised hallmarks of quality, suppliers of digital health products and services would do well to differentiate themselves by foregrounding compliance both in direct-to-consumer marketing and dealings with purchasers of health services whether they are the NHS, local authorities or insurers.

How can Blake Morgan help?

At Blake Morgan our health sector specialists have worked with both suppliers and purchasers of digital health solutions. We know what purchasers and end users need to be assured of safety and quality. Key points to address are:

• Emphasising and explaining approvals and accreditations, whether that is registration of software as a medical device with the MHRA or registration for the provision of regulated activities by the Care Quality Commission and other UK healthcare regulators
• Giving easy access to tools which allow patients to understand how outputs from diagnostic and predictive systems are achieved, what factors influence those outputs, what data has been used and how it may be shared
• Drawing on recognised international compliance standards, such as those required under the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, in instances where the UK’s own regulatory regime remains under development
• Demonstrating how obligations under equality legislation have been considered and addressed in the design and implementation of digital health
• Offering redress procedures for any user who is dissatisfied with the services they receive.

Taking the steps outlined above will have cost implications but may well differentiate a digital health product from its competitors. NHS and local authority commissioners in particular will appreciate evidence which they can factor into their own decision-making about the deployment of digital health technologies.

To get in touch with our team of specialists and find out about our digital healthcare expertise, visit here.