The medical and health care sector has been one of the last parts of the economy to embrace the possibilities that the internet creates for connecting people. Part of the reason is the sheer scale of the projects to put medical data online. Then there is the highly mobile and time critical nature of the sector itself. However, Gwenda Bason, marketing director at Dechra Veterinary Products, believes that Next Generation Access could make a huge difference to the way that the medical and health care sector interacts with its customers.
“The most recent research I have seen on this stated that only about 60pc of Britain’s veterinary practices had the internet in their clinics,” she says. “Because they are looking after animals all the time, they don’t sit in front of computer screens all the time like staff in a lot of other sectors. “Veterinary practices do use the internet but probably more for clinical research such as looking up a drug than to actually engage with their clients.”
NGA, which promises to increase broadband speeds by up to twentyfold, could change all that and Dechra Veterinary Products is already looking to take advantage. Based in Shrewsbury, the firm — the regulatory development, sales and marketing arm of listed Dechra Pharmaceuticals — markets treatments including Vetoryl, a drug for Cushings syndrome in dogs, and employs 212 staff, including 65 in the UK.
Dechra’s customers are veterinary practices, of which there are about 3,000 in the UK, with 10,000 practicing vets. The comparatively low daily internet use in the sector has meant that Dechra mainly markets its products via face-to-face meetings with vets and practice staff.
However, a recent move by the company to put an interactive career and professional development programme on the internet for animal health care professionals showed the latent demand for online communication, with more than 3,000 vets and veterinary nurses already signing up.
Ms Bason believes this demonstrates the potential for Dechra Veterinary Products to engage with more and more of its customers online and feels that the faster speeds and greater capacity of NGA greatly increases the attractiveness of this to vets practices. “It’s about supporting our customers,” she says. “One of the key things we’re looking at is doing more in education. “We were absolutely bowled over by the response to our first online venture in this area and we can see this channel growing a great deal. “The first one was on fluid therapy but we could do a lot more and NGA will allow us to make greater use of video and put many more materials online,” she explains.
“We could make the programmes much more animated and enjoyable.” Ms Bason believes that NGA could also enable Dechra’s experts to assist with online diagnosis via video link in the equine market and to communicate in the same way with customers in rural locations. In addition, she expects the improved internet speeds and capacity to allow Dechra to operate more efficiently, communicating via video conferencing with its offices in France, Spain, the Netherlands, the USA and Scandinavia. “It will make it a lot easier to communicate internally with all our different offices and departments,” she says. “We can already do telephone conference calls, but it’s much better to be able to see people face-to-face and watch their body language. “When we do video conferencing at the moment, we have to use a third-party provider but NGA will mean we’re able to do it ourselves.”
‘Some patients will not need to travel’
Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business believes that NGA has the ability to transform the provision of health care. “There have been experiments in the Netherlands where local GPs in rural areas have diagnosed online those patients who struggle to come to the surgery,” he says. “With the right access to the home, you can start monitoring patients who then don’t have to travel. “You’re starting to see companies like General Electric and Intel really getting behind remote medical management. “It should start taking off because it will be much easier, less stressful and more cost effective for patients to do that than to having to traipse into a clinic where they don’t necessarily need to."
“The technology is ready to do that. Whether society is also ready, we will see, but certainly the infrastructure is in place.” Mr Murphy says there will also be internal organisational benefits for doctors and hospitals, with the ability to access and share patient files, such as showing X-rays online to leading oncologists. “They will provide a better quality of care and do it more cost effectively,” he says.