There’s a common misconception in UK that GPs are inept or unreasonably sceptical about technology.
Newsflash.
I’ve never met a GP who wears a cardigan or plays golf on a week day.
Moreover, I’ll set out my arguement that British GPs are actually the earliest adopters of healthtech in the world.
Do you know when & where the first primary care electronic health record (EHR) in the world was launched?
No it wasn’t Cupertino or even Manhattan. It was actually Whipton near Exeter in ==1970== when Dr John Preece became the first GP in the world to use a computer during a consultation.
Dr Preece continued to research new uses for computers in medicine, co-designing a widely used drug database Exeter Database Systems Ltd.
He wrote a book titled “The Use of Computers in General Practice”
Just to repeat this point, Dr Preece was using an EHR 50 years ago.
The last time I checked the majority of NHS hospitals are still using pen and paper on wards and out patient departments.
When COVID-19 struck the UK in the first quarter of 2020, Primary Care doctors were quick to adopt a telemedicine first approach - as per NHSE guidelines and because we were concerned about vulnerable patients being exposed to COVID in the waiting room.
Don’t believe the negative press about GPs from the likes of the Times and The Daily Mail.
NHS general practice was open throughout, we were working, we were providing care to those who needed it - home visits for palliative care patients or elderly patients struggling and isolated.
We may not have had the front door unlocked, but you should probably have been staying at home anyway.
We called, texted, emailed, messaged and video called patients. This digital transformation was a long time in the making, but we essentially adopted this new way of working overnight and continued to provide care for our patients.
I worked throughout 2020 and through the pandemic, it was brutal.
As a clinician with an interest in digital transformation I was especially proud of my fellow general practitioners and their ‘early majority’ status in terms of adoption of digital tools and services, when compared with secondary care.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DiffusionOfInnovation.png
I’m sure Dr Preece would have been proud of us all
Annex/References
http://europepmc.org/article/MED/12424171
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315263/#!po=0.980392