The combination of text and video over handheld phones, video over BT's latest broadband wire technology (ADSL) and systematic application of computing and IT has a key part to play in modernising the grass roots of the NHS and upgrading health services for the disadvantaged and the housebound.

Today I and a group of my former senior BT colleagues are holding a demonstration in London in which we shall show that between them these technologies can work a minor revolution in local health services, dramatically cutting delay in treatment, saving money and improving the quality of care. This revolution could be complete by 2003.

We are presenting the results of a year's study of future communications for Nelson and West Merton NHS Primary Care Trust and its patients in Wimbledon, London. Primary care trusts and groups are a key building block in the government's strategy for modernising the NHS, and replace the Conservatives' GP fundholder arrangements. Each one groups 20 or so general practitioner practices into a unified management unit, with its own chief executive and spending budget. We need them to succeed, and the marriage of IT and advanced communications will be vital for this.

At the core of our demonstration are four scenarios, devised with the help of practising doctors, which show how two-way video through the air and by wire, plus advanced IT, could be used to help patients in the surgery and in the home.

In the most dramatic of these, Ann Shurrock, who is totally paralysed in real life, will act the part of a multiple sclerosis patient with a life-threatening kidney infection. She is dealt with in a matter of hours wholly in her home, with text and video over handheld technology playing a key part. In another Julie Paul, who acted in the original Avengers, will play a patient with a positive smear test for cancer who is examined and reassured online by a consultant at her local hospital while she is still only on her first visit to her GP's surgery, using video images sent over a broadband wire technology like ADSL, which is now being introduced by BT across the country.

The other two demonstrations will show an NHS Direct nurse using video over handheld to make a firm diagnosis and recommend treatment for a minor skin condition for an elderly patient at home, and video over wire being used for online training of health trust managerial staff. Despite all the hype, the telecoms industry has seemed in recent years to be remarkably ineffective at devising new services of its own.

It wasted several years in a search for a "killer" application for broadband to justify putting optical fibre through to the home - an effort which got nowhere. In the end it was computing which, through the internet and the web, made the breakthrough to new applications which needed broadband.

The logical next step for telecoms after public voice and data service was full quality public videophone. The technology is at last there to create this (it would make a big difference to the traffic problem by offering a viable alternative to physical travel) but there is no sign of it happening.

To try to crack this hang-up, we decided to use actors to test out new service ideas in simulated real life situations. Hammering out the scripts for them with the professional users concerned, like the doctors in the present case, turns out to be the key. It forces you to think out the working of your idea in concrete detail.

We have already used the technique with judges and solicitors to try out online civil law services: they loved it. The technique could be used to develop all kinds of new services. I think it is a breakthrough.

The demonstration will include a talk by Ian Ayres, chief executive of the Nelson Trust. He says that "one has only to walk into a local surgery to see that the building has been built round a series of paper-based nodes surrounded by a series of consulting rooms".

"The challenge," says Ayres, "is to move from that to an environment where clinicians have magically in their hand the information they need to see and treat a patient at wherever might be the appropriate location and at whatever time."

We believe that NHS GP practices and the community health services will grind to a halt within a few years unless they face and master Ian Ayres's challenge. Between them handheld radio, wire broadband and modern IT are providing the technology to make this possible. All that is needed now is the management will.

• Seaford Head Advisers' demonstration takes place today at the National Liberal Club, London, at 2.30pm.