Reply to: [HIFA] Self-care could cut need for millions of GP visits (4)

The following is a reply to a thread on HIFA - Healthcare Information For All:

Dear Lucie, Thelma and All,

The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) defined a dynamic economy as that which is in equal parts destructive and constructive (Abbott and Ryan, 2000).

As Lucie points out in the NHS we are set-fast in ill-health delivery, curricula and workforce planning. Breaking this demand-supply is to try to stop a runaway process that has spawned many other processes: specialties, disciplines, treatments...

Policy makers repeatedly place the solution in reducing demand by eliminating - providing cures for diseases and through technology.

Innovation through technology is still sold as a (the) solution (2002.. NPfIT - currently NHS Digital). Technology has a role to play. The benefits however must be Socio-Technical.

We can readily see the connection between Schumpeter's definition and our present preoccupation with innovation and technology driven disruption?

Talk abounds of the healthcare system / market / economy being disrupted (as per HIFA and this thread!).

Innovation is often stimulated through seed funding.

In computing a runaway process may need to be 'Killed'. Clearly and despite the resultant irony, we cannot do this to our respective healthcare systems (whatever their constitution and ideology).

We cannot Kill the NHS, private and 3rd sector systems we have at present and have them newly reconfigured on 31 December 2016, 23:59:60 UTC to be primarily:

HEALTH PROMOTING, PREVENTIVE - Self-caring and with a health literate populous

Even with the addition of a leap second; this would be a leap too far.

Change of our health care systems will need to be 'seeded'.

Many small gains can be compounded, the seeds must be broadcast across the domains of Hodges' model:

• INTRA- INTERPERSONAL
• SOCIALLY
• the SCIENCES
• POLITICALLY
• SPIRITUALLY

Abbott, J. & Ryan, T. (2000). The Unfinished Revolution: Learning, Human Behavior, Community, and Political Paradox, Stafford, UK: Network Educational Press. p.162.

Kind regards,

Peter Jones