The Convenzis Primary Care Conference series has welcomed over 1000 NHS based primary care leaders, 60 sector-leading guest speakers and 50 innovative and forward-thinking event sponsors. Our switch to virtual following the Covid outbreak provided a well-needed platform to discuss rapid tech scale-up challenges and remote consulting best practices. We look forward to continuing this series and providing key policy led updates and innovation.
“There was a real buzz to this event, with the participants exploring ideas with speakers, but more importantly, actively sharing their experiences with each other in the networking sessions. It was a pleasure to be involved and I look forward to doing it again!” The Primary Care Foundation
It is no surprise to hear that 2020/2021 provided one of the most challenging years for general practice. 80% of GPs say long waits for hospital care have increased practice workload. Practice workload has also been pushed up by cuts to social care over the past decade as well as in recent months by rising shortages of medicines.
Issues within the general practice workforce funding have also been identified as far too low to cover the current demand. To tackle this the government has promised funding will rise by around £1bn by 2023/24, with a further £1.8bn available to support the formation of primary care networks, (PCNs) although many GPs are yet to be convinced.
The patient population is also proving to be an area of concern, as the population ages the complexity in cases increases alongside it, now more than ever we need to be thinking outside the box and focusing on innovation and technology to help ease the strain currently faced by primary care providers.
Other areas of focus for Shaping the Digital Future of Healthcare include:
• GP data implementation: The GP data implementation service is providing a standard GP data set that will improve the information and insight underpinning research and planning across the NHS.
• GP connects: The GP connect service connects general practice IT systems so that information can be shared between practices and with other healthcare settings.
• SNOMED CT in primary care: The implementation of SNOMED CT in primary care ensures that all general practices in England adopt the same standard clinical terminology, SNOMED CT.
• Primary care support programme: The primary care support programme delivers new functionality for primary care registration management and for the NHS Spine demographics reporting services.
Research sources Shaping the Digital Future: NHS England / Deloitte Life Sciences / NHSX/ NHS Digital
AstraZeneca has provided a sponsorship grant towards this independent Programme. AstraZeneca has had no editorial input into or control over the agenda, content development or choice of speakers, except for the AstraZeneca sponsored symposia presentations.
