8th November 2002

Email this Page |

A demographic timebomb is ticking under Northern Ireland's healthcare service. As our population becomes increasingly elderly, there will not be enough young people to provide the level of unpaid homecare we have enjoyed in the past, according to UU's Professor Mary Chambers, Co-Ordinator of the Northern Ireland Centre For Health Informatics.

This developing crisis will cause massive stress and disruption to our healthcare systems. "Already we can see the signs of crisis," she said.

"For example, bed blocking - where people are well enough to be discharged, but cannot leave hospital because there is no-one at home who can look after them. The NHS needs to find other ways of delivering high quality healthcare support. There simply will not be enough people to provide the free care on which the NHS has relied to date.

"There are immense psychological and financial burdens placed on the legions of unpaid, untrained caregivers - it's a hidden human cost," Professor Chambers said.

Professor Chambers is concerned that Northern Ireland is not moving quickly enough towards the implementation effective health information systems - whether remotely delivered to carers via the web, or in terms of integrated electronic patient record systems that aid information sharing within hospitals, and between hospitals and General Practitioners.

Already, she said, Northern Ireland is at least three years behind European developments in tele-health care.

"We need to move quickly before these increasing stresses on our healthcare system become unmanageable," she said

Professor Chambers called for:

• A health policy which embraces new communications technology, bringing a new level of healthcare training and awareness to both professional and informal carers
  
• Greater collaboration and sharing of information, resources and expertise between Northern Ireland's many diverse healthcare organisations: 19 trusts, 4 boards, plus private and voluntary health sectors - as well with the Universities and the Department of health itself.
  
• Investment in the new communications technologies which can help address the emerging crisis of caring.
  
• Investment in education and training for both healthcare professionals and informal carers to enable them to make the most effective us of the new health communications tools
  
• Better integration and sharing of research outcomes - funded at public expense - into the delivery of health care. Often, the results of research projects are not integrated into either general policy formation, or the actual delivery of healthcare services - resulting in wasted effort.

These are just a few of the emerging healthcare issues that will be addressed at a two day healthcare conference at the Wellington Park Hotel Belfast on 7-8 November entitled Tele Healthcare - The Future. The conference is organised by the University of Ulster.

For further information, please contact:

Press Office Department of Communication and Development
Telephone: 028 9036 6178
Email: pressoffice@ulster.ac.uk