Artificial intelligence is about to transform healthcare. The claim is not being made by excitable tech gurus from Silicon Valley but by medics. Machines, having been fed enormous amounts of data, are developing algorithms that detect disease from X-rays and tissue samples. This is, potentially at least, a much cheaper and more efficient way to diagnose patients. It has been predicted that it could ‘save the NHS’. In the field of genomics, too, AI is likely to have an enormous impact. The prospect is that, in the future, we could each have our genetic code on a chip that we scan in during a trip to the doctor, like a loyalty card at the supermarket. Its data would then inform our diagnosis or help determine our treatment.
But then there’s the NHS. All this talk about AI and genomics sounds a little utopian when most of us struggle to get an appointment with the GP and spend many hours waiting on any dreaded visit to A&E. And the health service is hardly known for its seamless adoption of new technology. Many will recall the failed IT system, abandoned in 2011, that cost the NHS billions. So, if a revolution is coming, how can the NHS prepare for it?
This is the subject being tackled at the Spectator Health summit on Monday in the form of a panel discussion between Neil Mesher, CEO of Philips UKI, David Snead, consultant pathologist at Coventry and Warwick NHS Trust, Nicole Mather, life sciences strategy consultant, and Ian Campbell, director of Innovate UK, entitled: 'How can the NHS improve its uptake of new technology?'
Sir John Bell, author of the government’s life sciences strategy and one of the prophets of the coming transformation, thinks a closer collaboration between industry and the NHS is crucial. This, he argues, will allow innovations to be adopted more quickly and in a way that improves care. He points to one company whose role in equipping and running catheter labs reduced costs and allowed staff to spend more time with patients. The NHS’s relationship with industry, he says, needs to stop being ‘confrontational’. While it’s usually seen as a behemoth, the health service is made up of lots of separate entities. Any company trying to 'enter into a partnership with the NHS' has to knock on many different doors.
And staff are often just too busy to consider radically changing how they do things. They are focused on keeping the ship afloat. In social care, for instance, there is tremendous potential in using technology to better monitor patients at home – either through staff doing simple checks during home visits or through wearables that wirelessly alert doctors to changes in things like blood pressure. This technology would likely free up hospital beds and save money. Yet it requires an initial investment that hard-up councils seem unlikely to afford.
And, of course, there is always the danger of implementing technology badly, so that it hinders rather than helps staff. It’s no good introducing the latest expensive device on top of an existing infrastructure. These systems need to be addressed as well and better collaboration between industry and the NHS may be able to help here.
The health secretary Jeremy Hunt has claimed that medical innovation is ‘likely to transform humanity by as much in the next 25 years as the internet has in the last 25 years.’ The danger is that, as the best healthcare systems speed ahead into a new era, the NHS gets stuck on dial-up, waiting for the page to load.
For information on Philips and its solutions, visit: https://www.philips.co.uk/healthcare/nobounds/seamless-care
The Spectator and Philips will be discussing this and more during The Spectator Health Summit on 26 March at 1 Wimpole St. click here to register for your complimentary ticket.