Information prescriptions – the future?

It's only three and a half years since Covid began and we all said life would never be the same again. We also said we would have to get used to a new normal. But in many ways, life now has already returned to its familiar patterns. Probably faster than most of us imagined it possibly could back in the dark days of early 2020.

Day to day health services are one of the areas still affected by changes to working practices. Following on from the safe arrangements during lockdown, many of us may now mostly speak to a health professional on the phone, rather than in face to face consultations. We may initially fill in an online form to inform the surgery what our health issue is. Also, appointments may well be made with a nurse practitioner or paramedic instead of a GP. Like it or not, this seems to be the future of our community health services.

There can be positives. Health professionals realise that they can deal with many issues by giving information, or signposting individuals to further sources of information. This can include charities who are well-placed to offer very specific information, which is often outside the scope of many health professionals.

One of the services which has been developed is Healthinote. This is an online health solution already being used by over 3,000 GP practices throughout England and Wales. It enables health professionals to provide patients with clear, reliable health information. A health professional can look up a health issue in the online Healthinote library. They can then pass the information on to a patient in the form of an "information prescription".

The information included in the Healthinote library is reviewed to ensure that it is relevant and trustworthy. It's hoped that it will empower individuals to better understand and manage their health conditions.

UK Paruresis Trust (UKPT) was chosen to provide information to Healthinote. This will enable health professionals to quickly and easily pass information about paruresis and UKPT on to their patients.

This is great news. We know that GPs don't come across paruresis particularly often, especially in women. So Healthinote gives them a systematic way that they can signpost paruresis sufferers straight to our website for in-depth knowledge and support. That's got to be good.

For more information contact www.ukpt.org.uk

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