Innovation in Healthcare: improving care, driving efficiency

Barbican Conference Centre, London, UK (May 12, 2011)

The dramatic increase in life expectancy over recent years – thanks, in no small part, to healthcare innovations – now poses a significant challenge: how to maintain a sustainable healthcare system in the face of vastly increasing demand. "We can't just build more hospitals or buy more beds," says Lord Darzi, Chair of the Institute of Global Health Innovation, "the whole way in which we provide healthcare has got to change."

Innovation is one of the central focuses for the Department of Health and the NHS, as demonstrated by the Quality Innovation Productivity Prevention (QIPP) programme. But what does innovation really mean to the NHS? How can it solve the problems? Most importantly, how can you bring innovation to the front line? Innovation in Healthcare: improving care, driving efficiency will look at innovation in areas such as medical technology, biotech and pharmaceuticals, as well as procedural developments and strategies, offering an ideal forum for discussion of the latest innovations, and putting the NHS in touch with producers of new technologies.

Healthcare in the UK is constantly evolving, and technology continues to advance. As new technologies and processes are introduced into the NHS, patient outcomes improve, resulting in better quality of healthcare. However, technology is only one part of the 'innovation pathway' – organisational innovation and service redesign also have a major role in improving patient care, Lean methodologies are increasingly being adopted into the NHS, boosting efficiency and productivity, and effective data management has been identified as an important route towards improved patient outcomes, as demonstrated in the Department of Health's recent Information Strategy. A review by the Foundation Trust Network claims that the NHS can make £600m of back office savings through sharing services, reducing waste and making the best use of resources for the benefit of patients and the taxpayer.

Britain's thriving science industry, including pharma and biotech companies and some of the leading universities and research centres in the world, has a great role to play in strengthening the country's economy, and appropriate adoption of innovation can drastically reduce costs in the long term. Making the correct links with the NHS, expediting the uptake of innovation into the health service, is vitally important. Promoting innovation can stimulate growth at the same time as ensuring that patients have access to the latest medicines and medical technologies. Maximising the relationship between the NHS and the life sciences sector is hugely important, not only to the future of healthcare, but to the future of the UK as a whole.

At Innovation in Healthcare: improving care, driving efficiency, a programme of key speakers will consider the role of innovation in improving patient outcomes, and its place in the new NHS.

More: http://www.publicserviceevents.co.uk/event/programme.asp?ID=177