We were delighted to welcome University of Oxford’s Professor Trish Greenhalgh for our 11th annual public lecture on 3 February 2025. The sold-out event filled the City Hall in Bristol, with a mix of staff and students from the University, people working in health and care, and members of the public.
Digital tools should make healthcare more efficient and accessible, but do they make everyone’s lives easier? Despite the belief that advances in digital technology are good for us, they are creating new barriers for some people. Accessing healthcare now requires digital skills and devices, leaving those without these resources at a greater disadvantage.
In her illuminating and thought-provoking lecture, Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, explored how the digital age of healthcare is worsening health inequities.
Trish studied Medical, Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge and Clinical Medicine at Oxford before training first as a diabetologist and later as an academic general practitioner. She has a doctorate in diabetes care and an MBA in Higher Education Management. She leads a programme of research at the interface between the social sciences and medicine, working across primary and secondary care.
The event was introduced by Pat Kehoe, Director of Elizabeth Blackwell Institute who shared some insight into Elizabeth Blackwell’s life and legacy, and Evelyn Welch, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol, who welcomed Trish. Evelyn highlighted how Trish’s work seeks to celebrate and retain the traditional and humanistic aspects of medicine in healthcare, while also embracing the exceptional opportunities of contemporary science and technology to improve health outcomes and relieve suffering.
L-R: Trish Greenhalgh, Evelyn Welch, Pat Kehoe
Trish began her lecture by explaining the changing nature of healthcare; how it’s become fragmented, more complex, how patients are made individually responsible for tasks which previously would have been the duty of a healthcare professional, and how our electronic record (or digital facsimile) is what gets treated rather than the patient.
She acknowledged the next generation of researchers, mentioning three people’s work that she had included in the presentation: Francesca Dakin, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Services, who is from an Anthropology background; Sarah Rybczynska-Bunt, who is based at the University of Plymouth and works in Sociology; and Laiba Husain, also based at Nuffield, who works in the field of Psychology.
She shared learnings from the ‘Remote by default 2′ study, further research building on work undertaken when the country first went over to remote by default during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, which included research on 12 UK GP practices, patient and public involvement groups, and the National Institute for Health Research who funded it, looked at the impact of the shift to remote and digital modalities for both triage and clinical care.
Trish illustrated differing experiences by sharing fictional character case studies of people with different needs, backgrounds and digital know-how, highlighting how individuals face barriers in navigating the healthcare system.
She concluded that different packages of support were needed to help GP Practices create a tailored approach to healthcare delivery and serve their different communities. “We need to rethink our approach to digital access and address structural and societal problems, rather than relying solely on technological fixes.”
Conversations with researchers and clinicians
Before the lecture, a group of early career researchers and clinical colleagues had the pleasure of meeting Trish Greenhalgh at Royal Fort House.
“Meeting with Professor Greenhalgh was a fantastic networking opportunity for us as early-career researchers. My research interests include the self-management of long-term musculoskeletal conditions, co-creation and behaviour change techniques. It was great to chat about her expertise in health research, and our latest work developing an inclusive, co-created sleep app for teenagers in the UK. Her perspectives on translating research into real-world impacts were especially valuable.” Sarah Bennett, Research Fellow, School of Psychological Science. Find out more about the Sleep Well Study
“It was a great experience to hear about the breadth of research being done by colleagues in Bristol to address health inequalities. It was very useful to share our research plans for the Accessible Results study and we gained important insights and inspiration from Professor Greenhalgh’s work on digital inequalities.” Jessica Watson, NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer, Centre for Academic Primary Care (CAPC). Find out more about the Accessibility Results study
Trish reflected on the opportunity: “I spent the afternoon meeting people from the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute, and also from more widely across the university. And this idea of having an interdisciplinary institute that can draw down on the expertise across faculties and be a bit of a crucible. It’s a real honour to have met you all and to have heard about that institute, because it’s something that’s very dear to my heart.”
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Catch up
EBI Public Lecture 2025 recording – talk and slides only
EBI Public Lecture 2025 recording – full event with Q&A