Press release: NHS Confederation calls for the NHS to plan now for the shift in power that the information age will bring

18 Jun 2008

The NHS must plan now to embrace the challenges of care in the information age, according to a debate paper launched today at Delivering the future today, the NHS Confederation annual conference and exhibition. Disruptive innovation: what does it mean for the NHS? explores the challenge of planning for healthcare in an environment where the pace and extent of innovation in service models, consumer behaviour and technology is hard to predict.

There will be major medical innovations but it is easy to over estimate their short term impact.  It is likely that some of the most significant areas of change for the NHS will come from the ability of technology to empower people. The change in the balance of power and knowledge between patients and professionals resulting from this could be enormously significant.

Technology gives people the ability to manage their own health care much more proactively, enabling them to take ownership of their own health records, to form on-line communities to lobby for change and to be monitored in their own home via telecommunication. By opening up non-traditional care settings through web, phone and retail delivery mechanisms, technological innovation is also likely to change the shape of the NHS estate.

Commenting on the paper, Nigel Edwards, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, said:

"It is important to start with what people and patients want from services rather than what technology can do. NHS leaders are going to need to develop more personalised services providing care, support and knowledge, while maintaining the high quality personal interactions between clinicians and patients that make healthcare special.

"An annual pre-conference survey of NHS Confederation membership shows that NHS leaders recognise the opportunities that the issues discussed in this paper pose to their organisations. Respondents identified growing consumerism as the most significant external opportunity for future development of the NHS, with competition and choice, new technology and telemedicine identified as the top internal opportunities. To benefit from these opportunities, healthcare organisations need to become even more flexible and consider how to create new ways of working with their patients and professionals using the growing power of technology."

Notes for editors

1. The NHS Confederation futures debate series is designed to stimulate new thinking on future challenges to the health service.  There are four other papers in the series, which cover: social care funding, compassionate care, globalisation and topping-up. You can join the debate by contributing to the forum at www.debatepapers.org.uk. Here you will be able to read the papers and leave comments.
2. The papers will feed into the NHS Confederation annual conference and exhibition, Delivering the future today, 18 - 20 June at Manchester Central (formerly known as GMEX and the MICC).  Find out more about the event at www.nhsconfed.org/2008
3. The NHS Confederation represents more than 95% of the organisations that make up the NHS. Its members include the majority of NHS acute trusts, ambulance trusts, foundation trusts, mental health trusts, primary care trusts, special health authorities and strategic health authorities in England; trusts and local health boards in Wales; and health and social service trusts and boards in Northern Ireland.
   
4. Survey of chief executives and chairs (out of 215 responses): Growing consumerism has been identified as the most significant external opportunity for NHS organisations over the next ten years in the Confederation's annual pre-conference survey of its membership. 86% of respondents identified this as an opportunity, with 44% stating that this issue was a major opportunity, and a further 42% seeing it is as a minor opportunity. Turning to internal issues, just over 96% of members felt that Competition & Choice represented an opportunity for future development of the service. More than 93% of respondents also cited New Technology (excluding IT) and Telemedicine as further opportunities.

Contact details

1. Contact Niall Smith 020 7074 3304 or 077 6777 0309, Ruby Casey-Knight 020 7074 3306 or 07881 957 305 or Ruth Kennedy 020 7074 3312 or 078 8447 3086.  For out of hours media enquiries, please call the Duty Press Officer on 07880 500726.
2. Research supported by Microsoft. Microsoft is proud to support the NHS Confederation's research into disruptive innovation within healthcare. We are passionate about healthcare because this is an industry where our proven technology can not only help the business of healthcare run better, it can directly improve people's health and lives. That is why we are committed to delivering Knowledge Driven Health solutions that help transform healthcare delivery and improve health around the world. Microsoft Knowledge Driven Health encompasses solutions, technologies, products and services from Microsoft and our partners that connect citizens, clinicians and managers to connected systems and data, improving collaboration; information access and sharing. Press enquiries for Microsoft should be directed to Kirstin McKellar, Senior Account Executive, Edelman on 0203 047 2207.
   

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