The current economic, regulatory and commercial climate can lead to conflicting messages when trying to grasp the challenges and opportunities facing the retail banking technology industry throughout 2012.

Economic growth continues to elude many fragile economies throughout Europe and the West. This, alongside an international context of increased scrutiny and regulation as a result of failings exposed by the banking crisis, provides a difficult context for the world’s financial services industry. The UK is no exception. With dwindling growth figures and the looming regulatory upheaval of a retail banking ring fence, UK banks will certainly feel pressure upon their balance sheets in 2012. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: 2012 retail banking, compliance, Financial Services, retail banking ring fence, technology

 
The idea that UK electronics companies are fighting for higher margins is no longer representing the entire truth (this might still be the case in other areas of UK manufacturing – usually not associated with advanced technology).

Manufacturing of consumer electronics  and mass production in general has moved elsewhere, but industry has adjusted and is adapting to a new world where complex electronics and flexible added-value services have become the norm. With low volumes come high margins if technology and quality of services justify the premium price. It’s no chance that Germany is the world’s second biggest exporter of goods after China. Excellence, complexity, flexibility and creativity make products and processes harder to reverse engineer or copy, hence give early adopters enough room to innovate further through R&D investments and keep ahead of the curve. Germany is known for the quality of its engineering base but the UK is known for its world-class services (second only to the US).

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Technorati Tags: advanced manufacturing, automation, electronics, Mark Prisk MP

David Smith, the Economics editor of the Sunday Times, wrote a typically insightful piece on Sunday in which he explored two of the most fundamental questions for the UK economy over the next few years:

1. Will UK productivity growth – i.e. output per worker – resume its earlier upward trend?
2. Is the damage to the economy from the crisis and recession as bad and as permanent as feared?

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Technorati Tags: David Smith, growth, productivity, Sunday Times

All avid 3million lives supporters

Last night I attended a reception at the Institute of Directors following the December publication of the government’s life science strategy and its ‘Innovation, health and wealth’ report.  In attendance we had the Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley, Under Secretary of State for Health Earl Howe, Universities and Science Minister David Willets and the NHS Chief Executive Sir David Nicholson.  It was a fairly informal gathering with key people from the NHS, DH and industry mingling around slapping each other on the back for a job well done on getting so many stakeholders agree on a collaborate way forward to ensure the NHS continues to lead on innovation and quality.

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Technorati Tags: 3million lives, Future Forum, health IT, information for health, Innovation, Intellect Healthcare Programme, joint plan DH and Intellect, NHS, Telehealth

The Christmas break provided a brief respite from the almost continuous stream of negative news about the state of the world economy.  As you would expect, it hasn’t taken long for the Christmas cheer to be swiftly replaced with some New Year pessimism!

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Technorati Tags: economic growth, productivity

This week we’ve seen a raft of banking reform as mixed as the contents of the Christmas stocking many of us will be peering into in bemusement, in a few short days. That the government took three months to rubber stamp the somewhat limited recommendations of the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) is disappointing, but the final report of the Joint Committee on the Draft Financial Services Bill, and a paper from the Bank of England (BoE) on macro prudential policy tools all point towards recognition of a key issue that Intellect has been campaigning on for some time.

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It’s never promising to break for Christmas holidays with sad and gloomy news. So, the gist of this blog will be encouraging and forward-looking.

Despite general alarming feelings about the UK and European economies, several measures announced in the chancellor’s recent autumn statement are welcomed such as:

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Technorati Tags: Autumn statement, industrial policy, UK Manufacturing

In 1962 Kennedy gave a speech where he reaffirmed America’s ambition to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In his speech ‘We choose to go to the moon’, Kennedy squeezed 50,000 years of human history into 50 years to highlight the pace of human advancement. As the world stands on the edge of another defining moment in our history, this time economic, let’s pick up where Kennedy left off and use the same analogy to understand where we are today.

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Innovation, Health and Wealth - government's way forward

“We can be proud of our past – but we cannot be complacent about our future. The industry is changing; not just year by year, but month by month. We must ensure that the UK stays ahead…  – we’ve got to change radically – the way we innovate, the way we collaborate, the way we open up the NHS.”

These are the words of Prime Minister David Cameron, who yesterday announced a series of initiatives to respond to the changing nature of healthcare and the health and life science industries. The Department of Health launched the ‘Innovation, Health and Wealth: accelerating adoption and diffusion in the NHS’.

Complementing these reports DH also published the headline findings from the Whole Systems Demonstrator trial, the largest randomised control trial of telehealth and telecare in the UK, and indeed the world.

On the back of these headline findings David Cameron launched a campaign to roll out telehealth across the nation. He told the Independent:

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Technorati Tags: 3 Million Lives, Digital by Default, health IT, Innovation Health and Wealth, intellect, Intellect Healthcare Programme, NHS, NHS Innovation Review, procurement, Telehealth

Today, the National Audit Office (NAO) published its report on how the NHS, supported by the Department of Health, plans to deliver efficiency savings of up to £20 billion by 2014-15.  It’s a quite useful report clarifying a lot of questions that have been on people’s minds:

• how savings targets have been set across individual trusts and other health bodies;
• how those bodies plan to secure the necessary savings locally;
• how the Department and NHS plan to monitor progress; and
• how innovative practice is being shared.

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Technorati Tags: Department of Health, Efficiency savings, health IT, intellect, NHS, QIPP