How our GP practice became a topic at the UN General Assembly

Dr Amar Ahmed and Dr Fari Ahmad share their experience of presenting on digital innovations at the United Nations General Assembly in New York

Fari and I are both GPs at our large practice in Cheshire, where I have been a partner for almost 25 years (and yes, we’re married, having met at medical school 34 years ago). Our practice has long been at the forefront of adopting innovative technology in primary care, striving to improve patient care and reduce the administrative burden that often weighs heavily on clinicians. Last week, this journey took us to an incredible milestone – being invited to present at the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. 

Our invitation came from Martin Curley, a leader in digital health and healthcare transformation and professor of innovation at Maynooth University. Martin’s extensive work in digital innovation has made a global impact, and his recognition of our work was a significant endorsement. This invitation reflected our dedication to incorporating technology into primary care, which has driven us to be early adopters of various digital health initiatives.

The Digital Health Symposium focused on how digital health technologies are reshaping healthcare delivery worldwide, from artificial intelligence to advanced electronic patient record (EPR) systems. It was a privilege to present alongside global leaders passionate about using technology to tackle healthcare challenges. The range of countries represented was vast: from Nepal to the US; UK to UAE; and Rwanda to Ireland.

In our presentation, we discussed three key themes that have driven digital transformation in our practice: 

1. The Wilmslow Triage System

This is a digitally enabled triage process that handles patient demand efficiently. It allows patients to submit symptoms online, which are then reviewed by a clinician to decide on the best course of action, such as a face-to-face appointment, telephone consultation, or advice via text or email.

A combination of modest tech with psychology, this approach has reduced unnecessary appointments, freeing up time for GPs to focus on more complex cases, improving patient satisfaction, and improved psychological safety for our staff. The system has been widely adopted by other practices across the country, proving its value in modern primary care.

2. AI Ambient Scribes

This is one of the most transformative technologies we’ve adopted. These digital scribes work in the background during consultations, automatically documenting the interaction between the GP and the patient.

This technology reduces the administrative burden, allowing us to be more present with our patients. It enhances the quality of care, improves the patient experience, and reduces the risk of GP burnout by lessening the cognitive load on clinicians.

3. A new EPR system

Our imminent deployment of a new EPR system – the first in 25 years – has been another exciting development for our practice. This system (Medicus) uses modern cloud architecture and FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) APIs, which allow different healthcare systems to communicate seamlessly. Think of FHIR APIs as a universal language enabling better data sharing and integration. The new EPR system promises fewer outages, improved data sharing, and user-friendly access, ultimately enhancing patient care by allowing GPs to make more informed decisions.

Between the panels and keynote speeches, we also had lots of conversations with our fellow attendees. It was fascinating to see how the UK sits among other countries on healthcare and technology. Many in the US applaud the UK’s staunch defence of a free-at-the-point-of-delivery healthcare model but also acknowledge what seems to be almost unlimited patient demand. They were amazed about how cheaply we can deliver unlimited patient consultations on so little money per year. The NHS still serves as a model internationally illustrating an amazingly efficient healthcare system, despite it failing over the past few years due to lack of investment. 

Presenting at the UNGA was an eye-opening experience that reinforced how digital innovation can reshape healthcare worldwide, with primary care at the forefront of this transformation. One of the central themes of the symposium was the ‘Stay Left, Shift Left, 10x’ approach, which encapsulates the journey we need to take. ‘Stay Left’ encourages keeping patients within community-based care for as long as possible. ‘Shift Left’ emphasises moving treatments earlier into primary care settings, aiming for a tenfold improvement in quality, efficiency, and patient outcomes. 

However, for this model to truly succeed, it’s crucial that resources also shift from inefficient, expensive secondary care into primary care – the most efficient part of the healthcare system. By directing funding and support to where it can make the biggest impact, we can enable primary care to lead the way in building more sustainable and effective health systems, not just in the UK but around the world.

The NHS is sitting on a wealth of useful data. From talking to policy-makers, healthcare professionals, academics and health tech gurus from across the world, it seems to us that the NHS has a great opportunity to capitalise on its long heritage of leading primary care IT infrastructure. Most other countries are nowhere near to achieving what we have in the UK. 

With a bit of investment, we can modernise our systems and lead the world when it comes to digital health and mining the wealth of data we are sitting on to achieve huge leaps in population health improvement. Countries around the world are looking to Digital Healthcare to solve the worldwide crisis in healthcare delivery. We would be foolish as a nation not to invest in our digital healthcare systems to achieve this. We just need to navigate the regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles that hamper innovation in the UK NHS. 

Dr Amar Ahmed and Dr Fari Ahmad are GPs in Cheshire