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

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

Conference season is upon folks and it’s one down, two to go. Whitehall Watch is a third less happy than it was this time last week.

As ever, the Liberal Democrats have kicked off proceedings but, for the second year running, it’s with the novelty of actually being in government – cue unusually high interest in what’s traditionally a rather low key affair of mass introspection and headline grabbing proposals. Mansion tax anyone? (more…)

Technorati Tags: energy, Healthcare, NHS

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

As the deadline for submitting views on a new Information Strategy for the NHS closes today media is already reporting on all the challenges facing the DH in implementing the strategy. Our response and the BMA’s are getting much press coverage for saying the NHS lacks skills, ICT systems and money to drive an Information Revolution. But that’s not the whole story of our responses.

The BMA praises many of the successful ICT developments to date including GP Systems of Choice, GP2GP, ePrescribing systems, and PACs. The BMA continues to say they fully support the empowerment of patients through better use and access to the right information. Intellect’s response goes on to tell the government’s plans for an information revolution is an exciting opportunity to show how the NHS and industry can drive a step-change in health and social care that will be centred on patients and clinicians through better use of information and technology.

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Technorati Tags: eHealth, government IT, Information Revolution, NHS

… and I think it’s safe to say that health and social care has experienced probably the most tumultuous year in a long, long time. The shakeup of the NHS has created a lot of stirring and excitement, but mostly we are none the wiser on what the final structure will look like and where responsibilities lie.

Yesterday two important papers were produced by DH, one confirmed that it will be full steam ahead for ‘Liberating the NHS’ and the other said that the centre will tighten control over the budget for 2011/12. A very interesting dichotomy that Paul Corrigan has already emphasized and reiterated at the Intellect Healthcare Christmas Lunch yesterday:

“The Government, when dealing with the hypothesis of how the NHS might operate in the future, argue for liberation and the removal of their interventions from the NHS. However the Government, when dealing with a real live NHS issue – next year’s budget, believe strongly in central control and intervention. This would lead us to believe that they are ideologically in favour of liberation but practically in favour of intervention.”

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Technorati Tags: and everything else, central government, DH, efficiency, ICT, liberating the NHS, NHS

The great and the good convened at 1 Plough Place this morning – home of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts – for the launch of a new report on how the NHS can save a whopping £20 billion (and to hear what Andrew Lansley had to say about the whole thing on behalf of the Conservatives). I’m inclined to agree with NESTA’s proposition that: “It is possible to develop cheaper, more effective patient-centred services and approaches to public behaviour change but only by adopting radical new ways of innovating within the NHS”. There’s been a prevailing shift towards consumerism in healthcare which signals opportunities to make efficiency savings while improving patient satisfaction through better online self-service systems, as well as kiosks and the like. Is this going to be the holy grail that we’ve all been looking for?
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Technorati Tags: Consumerism, Healthcare, IQ, NESTA, NHS

Christine Connelly, the new(ish) CIO for Health gave her first public appearance at HC2009 this morning. Hotly anticipated to make a big announcement, she didn’t disappoint. Unveiling the government’s strategy for delivering the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the south of England following Fujitsu’s withdrawal, Connelly announced the opening up of the market with plans for 30 acute sites are to run competitions based on the Additional Supply Capability and Capacity(ASCC) – a framework agreement set up in 2007. The process is expected to last nine months, with contracts awarded for four years (making them coterminous with the existing BT/CSC contracts). This is very welcome news to members who successfully bid for a place on the catalogue but began wondering whether it was ever going to deliver any real business.

Other encouraging news came in the guise of plans to introduce new toolkits by March 2010 that will give trusts more control over local configuration of systems. Cerner and Lorenzo will create the foundations upon which trusts can innovate, in much the same way that new Facebook and iPhone applications are based on standard technology. The message was clear – “programmes of development will not be centrally dictated” – but technical standards and data standards are sure to pose some tricky questions.

Last but not least, Connelly is meeting David Behan, the Director General of Social Care at the Department of Health next week. Behan was a welcome guest at Intellect earlier this month and news that he is in discussions with Connelly about the true potential for integrating health and social care services is heartening. They will be looking at how far integration has come and how new benefits for patients can be created across all care settings, setting out the major milestones for the next 12 months.

So, despite some rather gloomy weather up here there is certainly quite a buzz. More soon.

Technorati Tags: ASCC, Christine Connelly, Facebook, Harrogate, HC2009, Health, Healthcare, iPhone, National Programme for IT, NHS, NPfIT