Addressing the audience at the NHS Providers annual conference 2024, Wes Streeting spoke on ambitions to reform the NHS, citing “the Darzi diagnosis” of the health service, highlighting long waiting times as the “biggest barrier” to accessing care, and voicing the need to modernise to meet the needs of citizens who are “used to choice, voice, ease and convenience at the touch of a button”.
Streeting discussed the “3 big shifts” underpinning the government’s 10-year plan for health: from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention; adding that whilst these shifts are “not radical new ideas”, the delivery of them “truly would be”. The health secretary also noted the need to “seize the opportunities of a scientific revolution” where data and technologies such as AI and machine learning can help support earlier diagnosis and the prevention of illness.
The speech moved on to address the “hierarchical” nature of the NHS in 2024, plans to shift power away from ICBs toward providers and patients, and unlocking the “unrealised potential” of the NHS as a single payer model “by making the NHS the best partner in the world for the development of new treatments and medical technology”.
Setting out evidence of preventable emergency hospital admissions, Streeting stated the challenge of tackling earlier diagnosis, designing services around people and those with long-term conditions, and moving away from fragmentation toward integration.
Promising greater flexibility for providers to innovate and “manage their own house”, he committed to no longer treating all providers and ICBs “as if they’re all performing equally”, highlighting a move next year to introduce published assessments of systems against set criteria, with the best performing providers set to be “rewarded” with greater freedoms and “a greater share of capital allocation”.
Streeting closed his speech with a final call to action for “a team effort, based on a shared national mission to recover and renew our National Health Service”, saying: “The challenge is huge. But the prize is enormous.”
To read the speech in full, please click here.
Reforming the NHS: key actions, insights, and reflections on the Darzi report
Following Labour’s win in the general election back in July, we focused on the key parts of the party’s manifesto, looking specifically to what it outlined around digital and data, including a pledge to harness the power of technology in enhancing diagnostic services, to “reform” the primary care system by delivering a “modern appointment booking system to end the 8am scramble”, and more.
In a LinkedIn poll, we asked our audience which of Labour’s key areas of focus should take priority for the new government, highlighting four answers to choose from: long-term management condition, investment into technologies such as AI, data and life sciences, and reforming primary care.
After the publication of Lord Darzi’s report on the state of the NHS, we explored the key messages around digital and data, including the “missed opportunity” of the last decade to prepare the NHS for the future by embracing technology and its ability to support a pivot from a ‘diagnose and treat’ model to one focused on prediction and prevention.
We also published comments and reactions from a range of stakeholders from across the health and technology sector on the report’s findings, the “missed opportunities” Lord Darzi highlights from analysis of the past ten years, and a look ahead to the ways technology can help secure the future of the NHS.
And toward the end of September, we covered Wes Streeting’s speech at the Labour Party Conference 2024, in which he called for a tech- and data-driven reform of the NHS, citing “grim” results from the Darzi report and “a decade of underinvestment”, pledging to tackle long waiting lists and create “a digital healthcare service powered by cutting-edge technology”.
Digital and tech in supporting the move from reactive to proactive care
In August, we were joined by Louise Croxall, CNIO for Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, who reflected on opportunities for increased collaboration around data sharing. “I think if everybody came together we could really focus on preventative health and tackling inequalities,” Louise said, “and bringing everyone’s data into play would be really useful in terms of drilling down and exploring why inequalities exist and what we can do about them”.
A HTN Now panel from October focused on tackling challenges from an ICS perspective; new models of care and pathway transformation; the role of technology in supporting the move from reactive to proactive care; and how a system approach can accelerate preventative care. For the panel we welcomed Deborah El-Sayed, director of transformation and CDIO at Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB (BNSSG); Dan Bunstone, clinical director at Warrington ICB; Stephen Bromhall, interim chief officer for digital and data at South East Coast Ambulance Service (SEC); and Laura Thompson, director of marketing at The Access Group.
