Video consultations - public and clinician views: consultation report

6 Recommendations

1. Going forward, health and care services should offer video consulting whenever it is appropriate, considering both clinical and social factors. This should be combined with person-centered choice to deliver the vision of care as described in Realistic Medicine.

2. Service providers should stop making generalised assumptions about the groups of people who can or cannot use video for appointments and enable individuals to make their own choice whenever possible.

3. Further work is required to maximise the benefits of Near Me, including raising awareness of the service, improving patient information, increasing the use across services, addressing digital exclusion including through expansion and/or creation of local hubs for people to use Near Me and community based borrowable devices.

4. Guidance to further embed the use of Near Me should be developed in collaboration with
professional bodies and others, including use in social care and the wider public sector.

5. An action plan is being developed by the Technology Enabled Care Team. It should be prepared, prioritised, and costed to support the implementation of the findings from this report. This should include actions to publish and disseminate the findings and further quantitative and qualitative analysis in collaboration with Oxford University.

6. Interest in publishing the findings in peer-reviewed health care professional journals should be considered.