Delivering the NHSX mission

The new joint organisation for digital, data and technology – NHSX – launched this month, with the mission to improve health and social care by giving people the technology they need.

The overall focus is to reduce the burden on clinicians and staff, giving them more time to focus on patients, through access to the right tools in the hope that this will improve productivity and ensure clinical information can be safely accessed wherever it is required.

The response, from announcement to launch of NHSX, has been positive and acknowledged by the industry as a natural progression for the NHS.

Matthew Swindells, deputy chief executive of NHS England, described this progression brilliantly, saying:

“The NHS Long Term Plan builds on the significant progress of the last 3 years and marks a transformational shift to a more digitally focused NHS from the introduction of the NHS App to digitising care across the NHS to joining up GP and hospital records so clinicians treating patients have access to all the information they need, where-ever they are.

Bringing together the leadership around this exciting agenda in one place will help us deliver the far reaching practical improvements from the Long Term Plan, improve the working lives of NHS staff and deliver better, safer care for patients.”

Earlier this week, I contributed to a great article in Health Tech Newspaper, discussing my comments and opinions on NHSX, and what needs to happen to deliver on its objectives.

The drive to create a core level of digitisation to support the delivery of good quality health and care is an important task ahead for NHSX. We have seen how the adoption of technology at pace and scale within independent health and care services has delivered efficiencies and positively impacted patient outcomes, and these best practice approaches can be applied to the NHS.  Digitisation is often associated with potentially ground-breaking innovation that will disrupt services. But there is also a need for technology to be applied to support more operational requirements; to reduce the burden on front line staff, underpin best practice, improve productivity and offer truly informative data to facilitate decision making which ensures a safe and effective healthcare system. All systems should be interoperable, future-proofed, adaptable and easy to use in order to encourage adoption.

Read the full article and some great opinions from my industry peers here.