The Business of Health and Medicine

This week on Inside Business, host Wendy Austin and her guests discuss the breakthroughs and challenges facing health and medicine in Northern Ireland. One of her guests is our very own Ryan Williams, Director of Connected Health.

He discusses the role of technology in domiciliary care and how Connected Health utilises technology to help get patients out of hospital and back into the comfort of their own homes faster.

In general, technology has been on the backburner in the home healthcare sector over the last 20 years and Ryan wants to highlight the innovative ways it can be integrated with home care to create a better patient experience.

He emphasises the importance it has to play but acknowledges that it’s nonetheless designed to work in sync with us and not completely replace the healthcare assistant role. Healthcare technology is simply designed to help home care assistants become more efficient with their duties and focus on what matters.

Connected Health operates on the three T’s; Talent, Training and Technology, there’s no doubting the human element has a huge role to play-and technology just complements it. It allows us to complete the more simple day to day duties without the need for an actual visit. Pill prompts, for example on TVs, negates the need for a home care assistant to come by just to remind the patient to take their medication and allows them to live a little more independently while ensuring they’re staying healthy.

Ryan credits our patient’s honesty in the company’s innovations too. Their feedback makes it easier to understand which areas we can prioritise tech in to provide a more well-rounded patient experience. Though we’re advocates for technology in healthcare, patient care is always at the forefront of everything we do.