Health Innovation North West Coast has welcomed the Government’s Ten Year Plan for Health and its focus on innovation as a key factor in setting the NHS ‘back on its feet’.
The long-awaited plan, unveiled by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, describes the need for radical change – ‘major surgery, not sticking plasters’.
It says healthcare innovation will be crucial in that change and aims to put the UK ‘in the driving seat of the biggest industrial revolution since the 19th century’.
It also says the health innovation networks ‘do important work’ and the Government will continue to fund and support them.
Dr Phil Jennings, Chief Executive of Health Innovation Network North West Coast, said the plan validated the work we and our partner health innovation networks carry out.
“The plan is a bold and ambitious piece of work and it points us in the direction we and our partners are already taking.
“We’re particularly pleased about its focus on AI and robotics. These are areas of work in which we’ve already shown we can convene decision-makers who will shape the innovation landscape.
“The plan also makes clear the Government’s support for the life sciences sector. This is crucial to us because we have long experience of working with companies in this and other sectors and know how valuable their contribution can be. We also know they face considerable obstacles which the plan aims to remove.”
A recent report, Defining the size of the Health Innovation Prize, commissioned by the Health Innovation Network, describes how health innovation could boost the UK economy by £278bn.
Dr Jennings added: “We are fully embedded in our local health and care systems and so we’re well positioned to deliver the place-based health improvements the Government wants to see. That in turn will convert to economic benefits.”
Richard Stubbs, Chair of the Health Innovation Network, said: “It is right that the 10 Year Health Plan will establish the digital and data foundations of the NHS to realise the potential of health innovation in empowering patients, better supporting the NHS workforce and driving economic growth in every community.
"The Health Innovation Network welcomes the focus on AI, expansion of the NHS App and the commitment to a single patient record, all of which will involve innovation partnerships to deliver change to local services that will have a national impact.”
The plan includes a chapter – Powering transformation: innovation to drive healthcare reform – that identifies five transformational areas that will be key to improvements. They are:
- Data to deliver impact
- AI to drive productivity
- Genomics and predictive analysis
- Wearables to make care real-time
- Robotics to support precision
Health Innovation North West Coast recently convened an AI symposium with our partners Liverpool Acute Adult and Specialist Providers that attracted more than 200 key figures from across the NHS, academia and industry.
And in May we hosted a conference in Preston that aimed to marshal expertise in the area of robotics.
You can read the 10 Year Health Plan here.
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