In Northern Ireland, the publication of a new three-year plan for health and social care has outlined the focus to deliver a range of citizen-facing digital services and investments in digital capabilities, as part of a wider drive to “stabilise, reform, and deliver” health and social care services across the nation.
Referring to the plan as fulfilling the need for a “roadmap out of decline” in Northern Irish health, health minister Mike Nesbitt notes the alignment of its goals with the NHS’s 10-year plan; in particular around the three key shifts from “analogue to digital, care closer to home, and sickness to prevention”.
Highlighting the need for “stabilisation” across finance, workforce, and system; the plan sets out efficiency saving actions, efforts to expand workforce training and education, investments in community care services, and investments of “up to £135m per annum to reduce the overall waiting lists” for time critical services.
For digital specifically, the plan states that by April of 2027, “we will have invested £241.5m capital and £89.5m revenue in our critical digital infrastructure”, including to replace “vulnerable systems”, improve cyber security, replace devices, and maintain network and wifi services.
On the need for ‘reform’, the plan highlights requirements around increasing capacity and reconfiguring acute services to “make best use of resources”. It draws out five themes: population health and health inequalities; adult and children’s social care; primary and community care; mental health; and acute hospital care. The plan commits to a range of actions, including embedding the Live Better programme and focusing on new policies and legislation for public health, as well as implementing a range of “citizen-facing digital services” which will support and enable “improved public health through the proactive management of chronic disease”.
In terms of delivery and “bringing care closer”, the plan summarises actions including a new model of delivery for home care services, an additional £17m of funding for mental health services, and an investment of £300m per year by April 2027 “subject to additional funding” in increasing elective care centres and Rapid Diagnosis Centres. Hospital at Home is also pinpointed for investment as part of further reform to urgent and emergency care.
To read the three-year plan in full, please click here.
The wider trend: Innovation and patient-facing tech
A recent HTN Now panel discussion saw us joined by academics and experts from the health tech space to discuss some of the challenges and best practice approaches around translating research into practice. As well as presenting their own research and findings to date, panellists talked about establishing a culture that prioritises innovation, and some of the barriers to introducing innovation into the NHS.
This month, seven ICBs in the south west have opened an opportunity highlighting their intention to commission a 24/7 text messaging support service. The aim is to offer assistance to people at times of crisis, including those who are highly anxious, depressed, in a heightened emotional state or suicidal. It has been proposed as an opportunity to “offer an alternative to people who may not use telephone services to access emergency support,” while also helping to “reduce the number of people reaching crisis and need for further more intensive support”.
University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) also shared how it has been utilising a new imager for cancer patients undergoing tumour removal surgery. Known as the AURA 10 mobile PET-CT imager, the device scans a specimen and uses high-resolution, submillimetre images to decipher whether all of a tumour has been removed. It was developed by Belgian company XEOS and has since been used for the first time by UHCW on a patient with a carcinoma of the jaw.
And HTN was again joined by a panel of experts and digital leaders from across health and care last week, who shared their perspectives and insights around fostering a culture of innovation, overcoming challenges, nurturing ideas, and more. Picking up on a key theme of the Darzi report around fostering a culture of innovation, Penny Kechagioglou, chief clinical information officer and deputy chief medical officer at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW), told us how a “whole organisation or whole system response” is key to how we address innovation, “because a lot of the time innovation is happening in siloes; we launch something and then don’t evaluate it enough, share learnings, or scale.”
