Connecting withNHS Health Checks

David Behan CBE, Director General for Social Care, Local Government and Care Partnerships at the Department for Health, made his comments at the Preventive Health 2010 Conference.

The conference was held by GovNet at the QEII Conference Centre, London which was jointly sponsored by Alere and Health-Smart.

Mr Behan said: "Some of the thinking is how we begin to develop more effective services for older people to improve the quality of their lives and the quality of the outcomes for them while increasing the value for the investment that's made.

"Also, we are thinking about the integration between health and social care and there is an emerging narrative about securing outcomes while scrapping targets."

The conference also heard from Dr Ameet Bakhai, who gave a presentation sponsored by Health-Smart entitled 'Re-designing the NHS using Self Empowerment Technologies'.

Dr Bakhai said: "When an individual is admitted to hospital with pains in their chest caused by heart problems, that means their life expectancy has just been reduced by a third. As a cardiologist I have been on a journey from treating coronary heart disease to preventing it by working with technology to empower patients.

"Thanks to the work my colleagues and I have been undertaking with Health-Smart, we have developed the Smeart Heart tool that allows people to be able to see for themselves the risk they run of having a heart attack. I'm convinced if people can see this risk they will be empowered to take the action needed to enjoy their lives to reduce their risk of a heart attack.

"I wonder if the NHS needs a health check - it is no longer the lean, mean, decision making machine it once was and appears slow, sedentary and almost obese with red tape. We have to be able to innovate and respond quickly to demands as clinical leaders."

Steve Roberts, Interim Project Manager, NHS Health Checks, NHS Telford and Wrekin gave a presentation of Point of Care Testing sponsored by Alere.

He said: "Point of care testing is a proven way of getting hard to reach groups to undergo health screening in order to prevent serious disease. If these groups of people can't be screened then there is a real cost to their health.

"It has been shown that testing a patient at their point of care can achieve significant savings of up to 35 per cent compared to testing them at another site."