Babylon: GP at hand - all thoughts welcome

[MichaelMumsnet]

Hi folks,

Mumsnet is looking to team up with Babylon to promote their free NHS "GP at hand" service (available to people living or working within 40 minutes of a GP at hand clinic) and Babylon’s paid online doctor (available to all UK residents).

Babylon offers both a free NHS and private 24/7 GP service, which lets members have virtual doctor’s appointments from their mobile, arrange prescriptions for local collection and get specialist referrals.

To get the service for free, you need to live or work within 40 minutes of a GP at hand clinic and switch your registered NHS GP practice to GP at hand, Babylon’s NHS offering. When you register for GP at hand, you will be de-registered from your current GP practice. If you’d prefer to stay with your current GP, you can use the Babylon service on a pay as you go or subscription basis for quick, easy access to doctors anytime.

If you’re not sure whether you need to see a doctor, Babylon offers an AI symptom checker which you can access for free via their app. The app also has a handy tool called Healthcheck, which creates a free health report for you and suggests changes you can make to live a healthier lifestyle.

We think these services could be genuinely useful to parents (and non-parents) and we'd love to know what you think too – all thoughts and comments gratefully received!

MNHQ

The AI symptom checker is deeply flawed - look at @DrMurphy11on Twitter. He has done lots of testing with barn door symptoms of emergency presentation (heart attack/ PE / DVT) - all hopelessly mistriaged.
He tried it with a simple nosebleed and got questions about erectile function??!!
Also it is very difficult to manage illnesses in children via a “virtual” appointment and I absolutely would not trust any doctor who is willing to prescribe having not seen or examined an acutely unwell child

If they cream off all the “easy” patients who register near their work (and don’t appreciate that when they are ill and at home they are no longer registered with their local to home GP) then the local GPs will lose a lot of funding and find it hard to provide services for the elderly and complex patients they are left with.
They also push a lot of extra paid services for quick appts etc, so it’s not all Free NHS services either.

Please don't do this. For the reasons stated above.

This is a deeply flawed product, which is not supporting the NHS in any way but is undermining it.

Really bad idea. Undermining proper NHS GP services and the online thing would worry me in terms of getting stuff wrong.

plus, the actual real life GPs that you can see with this crowd are London Centric.

Really really bad idea and I'm disappointed to see mumsnet getting into bed with this type of organisation.

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/gp-topics/it/babylons-gp-at-hand-adverts-banned-by-watchdog-for-misleading-patients/20037559.article

www.nhsforsale.info/private-providers/babylon-health.html

bore thanks for those links.

As PPs have said this is a deeply flawed system and is not proven to be safe. There are serious concerns about GP at hand and this is outlined in this month's lancet article. Please don't do this.
In addition it is also threatening the security of other GP surgeries who are left with complex or elderly patients (anyone who is basically not a young healthy person) with far less money.
There is a BBC documentary about GP at hand on iPlayer at the moment which highlights the issues.

www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/views-from-the-nhs-frontline/2017/nov/16/seeing-gp-smartphone-sounds-wonderful-its-not

www.ft.com/content/19dc6b7e-8529-11e8-96dd-fa565ec55929

www.ft.com/content/19dc6b7e-8529-11e8-96dd-fa565ec55929

Also see what the hugely respected medical writer Dr Margaret McCartney has to say about this product.

@JustineMumsnet please, please don't go ahead with this 'partnership'.

Very disappointing to see Mumsnet supporting the privatisation of the nhs.

Glasgow GP Dr Margaret McCartney said: ‘[Babylon is] very good at getting publicity. This is not a good test of safety, accuracy, assessing impact on other areas in NHS. There is a huge need for better tech in the NHS. But NHS having to mop up costs of supply led demand - and this isn't sorting out basic issues.’

www.gponline.com/gps-question-babylon-test-found-ai-on-par-practising-doctors/article/1486351

Wouldn't touch it with an Infected barge pole.

So many good points made above.

I'd hate to see a company like that tied in with mumsnet. It would clearly be about money and tapping into a sometimes vulnerable market (new parents worried about their babies health) which isn't in the original spirit of mumsnet at all.

i understand you need to make money out of this forum but please not at the expense of someones health.

@MichaelMumsnet will mumsnet being going ahead with this if the feedback continues in the vein so far?

You will also provide us with a copy of identification documentation for ID checks to be carried out by one of our commercial partners.

From their privacy policy.

Would I fuck give them any copies of id doc for checks to be carried out by one of their commercial partners, when I don't know who that partner is.

I hope Mumsnet won’t proceed with this partnership in light of universally negative feedback.

Babylon and the like are dangerous, very much a major accident waiting to happen

We use your email address and/or phone number to contact you with occasional updates and marketing messages where you have not opted out, based on our legitimate interest in marketing our services to you and subject to your right to opt out at any time.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

We may share your personal data with companies we have hired to provide services on our behalf, including those who act as data processors on our behalf, acting strictly under contract in accordance with Article 28 GDPR. Those data processors are bound by strict confidentiality and data security provisions, and they can only use your data in the ways specified by us.

None of those companies they are sharing data with is named.

Well, I wouldn't be doing it, but I suppose it's up to mumsnet if they are happy to be associated with promoting this.

Also, for the record, again in their privacy statement, they say they will share records of minors without consent. If you use our other services (including our private service), and if you have given consent for us to do so, we will send the consultation notes that we take during your use of the private service to your NHS GP (for minors, we will share such notes, in line with medical guidelines, without such consent). As mumsnet is a parenting site, this would need to be made abundantly clear to parents using the site for anything to do with children and not hidden away in a privacy statement.

So I put in back pain, with pain down one leg and went through the questions and it told me to seek immediate emergency medical help as I might have cauda equina. At no time did it ask me as to the severity of my pain, nor did I indicate any issues with urination and it asked me if I was continent of stool, which I thought was an odd way to phrase a question, but it definitely got that wrong.

And I put in a headache, just a headache and it's told me to talk to a GP within 6 hours in case I have all sorts of things wrong, and of course it's suggesting an appointment with Babylon...

I hope that if mumsnet do this then they make it very clear so that I can stop using mumsnet.

It's not a service I would use and certainly not something I would recommend to other people so I'd be really disappointed if MN endorsed this and allowed the blue "approved by mums" logo to be used on it.

To put it very bluntly, this is a morally dubious company who is contributing to the decline of the NHS and is a malpractice suit waiting to happen.

I can only echo PPs. This is a dangerous idea. Mumsnet will give this company credibility despite serious safety concerns.

@MichaelMumsnet can you come back to this thread please?

I believe my GP left my local practice to work at a place like this

i wouldnt use it