Analogue to Digital: Looking Back to 2014, Forward to 2034

Reflections from a decade ago

Roughly 10 years ago (actually nine to make me feel younger) from today, I started my career in the NHS as a Foundation Doctor at Bedford Hospital. The Trust was a little bit ahead of its time, having implemented the use of electronic prescribing, and incorporated a hospital at night system, semi ridding itself of the burden of bleeps (at least at night). However, in comparison to today’s standards, the hospital was still very much in the analogue world – patient notes were paper-based, patient observations were documented on paper charts, and communication between healthcare professionals often relied on face-to-face interactions and I remember using the dreaded fax machine, or at least failing to.

I remember many a night, trudging through the hospital, adjusting to this new nocturnal world of mine, with a tablet which would tell me my jobs, ordering them in a red, amber, green system to prioritise, as I painstakingly located the paper notes to review the next patient’s history and plan my management. I would consult with a patient, or deal with an emergency, and come out thinking how do I effectively document this? How do I make sure I’ve captured all the right information to allow the team in the morning to pick up on what had happened overnight? Most of all, how do I make sure I don’t miss anything crucial that could impact patient safety, given I was a green doctor that had been thrown into the deep end?

Fast forward 10 years and the situation is very different in most hospitals, with the widespread adoption of electronic patient records, and the integration of technology to facilitate documentation, communication and clinical decision making. So, we aren’t really analogue are we? Yet evidence shows from organisations like the Royal College of Physicians that my medical colleagues now find the burden of IT, and electronic systems, as one of the biggest challenges to their clinical practice and workplace wellbeing.

Digital hopes for the future

I hope now is the time for digital change, as we look to the next 10 years ahead and how life will be for a Foundation Doctor graduating in 2034. I am optimistic as the NHS looks to boost recruitment to medical schools to meet future demands. I see a world where that next generation Hatim will carry around a device, integrated with their electronic health record, ambient voice technology and possibly agentic AI, that will help tomorrow’s doctors navigate the clinical environment, prompt them on tasks, supporting instant documentation, and even help them to make decisions and act on those decisions, freeing them up to focus on the human aspects of medicine.

On Tuesday 3 December, I will be a panellist on the next of the NHS Change engagement sessions with NHS colleagues, my second of the series. You can find details to join here – Click here to register for 1 of the 5 dates – Change NHS: Shifting from analogue to digital online discussion – Teams

This will be the last of the Analogue to Digital, and I look forward to this engagement, which will support the likes of the Rt Hon Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and the NHS leadership team, with their plans to supercharge the digitisation of the NHS over the next few years and beyond, as per the NHS 10 year plan – I’ll keep you all posted on my reflections!