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

*For those who attended the session today, as discussed, please feel to add comments below to further the debate*

BAG Open Space Event – How can we grab senior management attention and sell the Quality message
Tuesday 29^th November 2011

Facilitator, Jim Wade, The Business Improvement Network

An Open Space gathering organised on behalf of Intellect’s Business Assurance Group by The Business Improvement Network (www.bin.co.uk)

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Technorati Tags: BAG, business assurance, intellect, quality

Following Intellect’s successful 4G Mobile Broadband conference, I would like to thank our speakers and panellists for their enlightening and provoking presentations and insights during the panel discussions.

Our day was kicked off by John Higgins who introduced John Woodget of Intel, followed by H Nwana of Ofcom and Frank Mather of the European Commission.

John Woodget spoke about the service provider sector - particularly the need for the industry to regain leadership. Intel believes this can be facilitated by a number of measures including; swift release of spectrum, development of longer term strategies, regaining international influence and the promotion of UK industry. (more…)

Technorati Tags: 4G, Adam Pollard, Analysis Mason, Android, Andy Nuttal, Apple, Blue Nowhere, DCMS, Dr Matt Yardley, Ed Vaizey, EU, European Commission, Everything Everywhere, Google, H Nwana, ICT KTN, Intel, intellect, iPhone, John Woodget, Kip Meek, LTE, mobile broadband, mobile network operators, Ofcom, Peter Curnow-Ford, Philip Hargrave, Skype, Stephen Lerner, Three, Vodafone, Wimax

Last night’s Stuff 2011 Awards caused a little bit of a stir in the mainstream press this morning.  Apple iPad2 missed out on the headline prize of Gadget of the year making way for the more alternative Asus Eee Pad Transformer.  Cynics might say this was a cunning ploy to promote the event, I’ll reserve judgement.  However for me, the more significant story of the evening was the winner of the Innovation of the Year, deservedly awarded to OnLive.

For those of you who don’t know, OnLive is the cloud based video game service.  It is undoubtedly a game changer for the traditional console market.  All you need is your controller, screen and a good broadband connection.  You buy your games like you buy your apps on your smartphone, instantly. The service was launched in the UK in September and is expected to experience rapid growth.  An interesting question that struck me was how the growth of Cloud services in the fun private consumer sphere can affect its takeup in the Corporate world?

In the business world, Cloud Computing is still the hot topic of the day and Intellect will be addressing the current state of play at our Cloud conference on the 22^nd November.  However, there are still considerable barriers to adoption in the business world, often with decision makers and CIOs not wanting to take a risk on something new. 

In terms of the name itself, Cloud has not been used as much in terms of naming of services.  Does the average Gmail user appreciate they are using Software as a Service?  Probably not.  Whereas in the business world, Cloud is much more ubiquitous.  My prediction is that the presence of companies such as OnLive and the success of features such as iCloud on the new iPhone 4S will win people over to cloud-based services in general.  In other words, it will become socialised, accepted and legitimised.

Technorati Tags: business world, cloud, icloud, intellect, Intellect Cloud Conference, OnLive, private sphere, saas, stuff

 Earlier this month Warwick University was invaded by more than 1200 people with a healthy obsession in outer space, including an MP, Astronaut and two Mars rovers. This wasn’t a Star Wars or Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy convention, but the UK Space Conference 2011 Organised by the Intellect events team, and commissioned by the UK Space Agency (more…)

Technorati Tags: Access to space, Arthur C Clarke awards, Esero UK, intellect, NASA, Policy, Space, Space business, Space industry, Space tech 2011, UK Space

Next year sees the release by Ofcom of two blocks of spectrum, 800 MHz and 2600 MHz, a move which will have a major impact on the mobile broadband market. The House of Commons Culture and Media Select Committee has been hearing evidence from interested parties, including Intellect.

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Technorati Tags: Arqiva, DCMS, Everything Everywhere, Inmarsat, intellect, Ofcom, Parliament House of Commons, Satellite, Select committee, Spectrum, Telefonica O2, Vodafone

It must have been hard for anyone keeping up with the news to have avoided all the politicking around the health reforms in recent weeks (well it’s always been a subject for politicking) as the ‘listening exercise’ came to a close. But I think there has been a big omission in these debates that the politicians have yet to fully explore. While the focus has much been on the particularities of the reforms – GP commissioning, competition etc. – the biggest threat, and not the main focus, has only been mentioned in the preludes to speeches and papers. That threat is the crisis facing the NHS in its entirety. In a Radio 4 programme on 05 June 2011, Sir John Oldham and John Appleby (King’s Fund chief economist) outlined the future of a NHS costing close to 30% of GDP over the next 50 years if we provide services they way we do now. This is quite unsustainable, and a re-organisation of the NHS and GBP20 billion savings by 2015 will not be enough, a new social contract may be needed. But we live in the now, so for now we focus on the current reforms…

All three parties have been quite vivacious about these reforms, often overplaying and aggrandising their claims. But it is no surprise that one way or another, most of the proposed reforms have been on the table or even piloted in this country by both the Conservatives and Labour over the last few decades. It’s just that no one has tried to do it all at once. GP commissioning is not new, nor is introducing a bit of competition and private providers, but somehow when the Health & Social Care Bill was introduced in January things started to unravel for health secretary Andrew Lansley.

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Technorati Tags: DH, health IT, intellect, NHS, reforms

Today the government has announced greater centralisation of purchasing for common goods and services. This makes good sense, and is something the technology industry has long advocated as a way to minimise duplication and reduce the costs of procurement (though ICT services can be slightly more complicated than stationery, of course). Even greater savings will be possible if local public service delivery bodies take advantage of centralised deals, and the technology industry is keen to do its part to help make this possible.

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Technorati Tags: Cabinet Office, Innovation Den, intellect, John Collington, procurement, SMEs, Stephen Allott

Tesco has become the latest big player to stake a claim in the Video on Demand gold-rush by buying an 80 per cent stake in movie streaming service Blinkbox.
The deal pitches the high street retailer against Amazon’s Lovefilm and Sky in the UK and mirrors a deal by WalMart, the US supermarket group who own ASDA in the UK, who bought Vudu, a similar service, in the US last year.
This could be the start of a major upheaval in the VoD market given Tesco’s position as a major retailer of TVs and it’s huge customer base, many of whom it has strong links with through its clubcard offering.
Richard Brasher, Tesco’s UK chief executive said the deal will mean the company can link the purchase of a product to the building of a digital collection.
So, next stop Tesco working with CE manufacturers to offer VoD services bundled with connected TVs, tablets or other devices. products.
So how does that shake up this emerging market? Well the existing players will certainly be taking note of Tesco’s move given their marketing and spending power, plus links with customers. For CE equipment makers it could offer opportunities to drive interest in connected TVs and other devices. Businesses that operate in this area, such as broadcasters, who haven’t made their move yet may be running out of time.
By the time we get to our CE Conference, the future of digital entertainment in July it will be interesting to see how this market will have developed and I’m sure Tesco’s purchase will attract interest in the retail and understanding the connected consumer sessions.

Technorati Tags: Blinkbox, CE conference, intellect, movie streaming, Tesco, VoD