Barclay urges NHS to change risk appetite for innovation

29 November 2022 Alison Moore

steve.Barclay LIn a speech to the Spectator’s health summit, Mr Barclay said: ‘Currently, I believe the NHS scores the risk of innovation too highly when compared to the risks of the status quo and I think that needs to be recalibrated. This is because innovation tends to be judged, in isolation, in a silo.’

He gave introducing machine learning as an example. While it might carry some risk, this needed to be judged against the risks in the current situation where there may be long delays in treatment due to staff shortages.

‘The speed of treatment and the ability to better target valuable resource needs to be weighed as part of the risk assessment of that innovation,’ he said.

In a wide-ranging speech, he also insisted efficiency in the NHS was an indicator of ‘wider system health’ and a patient priority as well as a financial one.

Initiatives such as direct access to diagnostics for GPs and ‘one-stop shops’ for women’s health could lead to quicker treatment and ultimately better outcomes, he said. ‘Getting the right antibiotic first time, rather than the third or fourth time’ would also be more efficient in terms of cost.

‘So an efficient system will get better treatment to the patient and improvement in patient outcomes, but in doing so, it will also unlock value for money,’ he added.

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