GreenCare: Decarbonising the NHS through digital transformation of older adult health and social care

COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on the health and social care sectors, increasing social isolation amongst older adults and disabled people, particularly within ethnic minority and deprived communities, and providing good care in this situation is challenging. Repercussions from the pandemic include reduced face-to-face consultation, neglected chronic disease management and non-COVID emergency admissions, and severe backlog on resuming normal service.

This disproportionately affects healthcare access for older adults and minority groups, who are now at even greater risk of succumbing to ill-health, through accelerated functional decline, leading to falls, which are the leading cause of accidental deaths in seniors costing the NHS a staggering £2.3Billion each year.

The NHS contributes 6.3% of the UK's carbon-footprint (27.1MtCO2e), 24% from buildings and 17% from transport, is the largest contributor of public-sector carbon emissions, and one of the principal targets of the Government's Clean Growth Strategy to achieve Net Zero by 2050\. Hence, COVID-19 has increased the burden on an already overstretched and unsustainable health-service and digital transformation is urgently needed to maintain current care standards in the face of a rapidly ageing population.

There is strong evidence that preventative physiotherapy/exercise interventions in seniors increase disability-free life years by reducing injuries/falls. GreenCare delivers a first-of-a-kind avatar-led interactive remote-physio system. Innovative 3/4D machine-vision biomechanical analysis and class-leading AI algorithms will be used to precisely measure joint position and other postural characteristics, enabling on-demand performance assessment and personalised exercise intervention via a user-led mobile-interface design, sharing data with primary care electronic health records.

GreenCare directly addresses the necessity for remote consultation and proactive care management, minimising infectious disease transmission, helping the NHS to build-back post-COVID in a sustainable manner, prolonging independent living in seniors, whilst decreasing elderly-care NHS costs and entrenched healthcare inequalities. Reducing Face-to-Face outpatient-consultations (£25-£100 and 50KgCO2e per appointment), and minimising avoidable hospital attendances (£1,600 and 380KgCO2e per emergency-admission), through early remote-physio intervention offers potential for overall NHS savings of £1.4Billion and 312KtCO2e---1.2% of NHS 2050 sustainability targets.