I've always been committed to making change happen, particularly in trying to reduce health inequality. I have previously worked to reduce teenage pregnancy, supported refugee doctors to become fully-fledged UK doctors, tried to raise quality in general practices,  and my current work has been centred around getting people to look after themselves better. Part of that is to use technology to help. So, rather than simply 'self care', I feel that the way forward is for 'shared care' to empower people, by understanding their medical conditions, and following clinicians' advice, supported by text messages, apps, management plans, video consultations, and social media.

One of the main problems with this has been the lack of confidence of clinicians about using technology in this way. There was a lack of trust in the technology, and also in patients' ability to select reliable information from internet sources.

So there needed to be training of clinicians, and this began with doctors and nurses  - the nurses had a pivotal role in the interface between medical teams and patients -  and then later on with a wider group of professionals, such as social workers, mental health workers, as well as allied health professionals.

Then, the patients, be they elderly, socially disadvantaged, with physical or mental health problems, refugees, or excluded by being in special needs education, all needed some help with unfamiliar technology. Some were able to  adapt with help from a specialised community-focused IT organisation, but there were many who found the sight of a keyboard was enough to deter them, and I had the idea of using Amazon Echo Shows, which required only a voice to control them.  

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