Some of you may have already seen this but I’ve released a report with Matteo Berlucchi, the Chief Executive, of Your.MD defining a new healthcare sector – pre-primary care.

The report, was launched at the HealthTech Summit in Lausanne, has been endorsed by Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, and includes contributions from leading minds in the field including Sir Muir Gray, Dr Molly Coye and Dr Fred Hersch. They, together with many others, share Matteo’s and my vision that pre-primary care will offer fundamental support to under-resourced and underfunded health systems worldwide by providing quality assisted self-care provision through technology

The report proposes that a digitally enabled pre-primary care sector would ease the burden on doctors, thus reducing the bottleneck and alleviating the structural pressures on the global health systems.

Technology would empower citizens, carers and community health workers to appropriately manage health issues prior to a consultation with a doctor, delivering a customised approach that fits with modern lifestyles and needs that can be managed at scale.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “New concepts like pre-primary care are important given the broad consensus on prevention and the need to improve quality of care just as demand rises from our ageing population. So this is the right discussion to have as we seek new approaches to build a genuinely 21st Century health service.”

Matteo thinks about it like this: “We’ve vastly exceeded the capacity of our primary healthcare services globally. With waiting times reaching 18.5 days in US cities and an estimated 30,000 residents per doctor at primary health centres in India, skilled healthcare providers are physically incapable of servicing the ever increasing demand in both the developed and the developing world. A technology-driven pre-primary care approach is the only way to alleviate these pressures and provide personalised assisted self-care to everyone.”

The pre primary care report is available to download HERE.

Please discuss the concept and spread the report. Fundamentally, we need a unifying definition that isn’t condition specific or technology dominant. We can now create a new health care sector appropriately levers technology, empowers citizens and creates a new workforce of healthcare workers.