Social Marketing Campaigns within the NHS.

Earlier this month David Cameron unveiled plans to allow patients’ records and other NHS data to be shared with private life science companies. This caused an outcry amongst privacy campaigners: the government stated that all necessary safeguards would be in place to ensure protection of patient’s details.

Unfortunately I don’t think the Government is tackling the real problem: individuals with long term chronic conditions. They are the most frequent users of healthcare services, studies have shown that these people represent:

70% of health and care spend.
77% of inpatient bed days.
55% of GP appointments.
68% of outpatient and A&E appointments.

There are around 15 million people in England (1: 3 of the population) who have a long term condition. While the number is likely to remain relatively constant, there will be a growth of people with comorbidities over the next ten years. Even more concerning are the number of people clinically identified with hypertension: 7.1 million. There is an equal number unidentified with hypertension. This equates to a quarter of the population.

As it stands today, it is the GPs who own and manage patient data. I would argue that they could do a lot more with this information. Unfortunately GPs do not have the skills or resources to do this. There is a clear opportunity to provide focused social marketing campaigns that can target specific individuals. This could make a huge difference to society.

So with this in mind, before giving the data to private life science companies the Government should look at centralising patient data within the NHS. This new team should be created with the sole task of focusing on developing campaigns that change the behaviour of targeted population.

Credits:

The lead picture is an adaption of the work by winnond's:

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1970

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Alan Shaw

Director & Senior Lecturer at Strategic Planet & Leeds Beckett University

Dr Alan Shaw is a Senior Lecturer and Marketing consultant focusing on a range of sectors. His main interests are in strategy development, social marketing, digital marketing, advertising, consumer behaviour and marketing application.