Change Election - What Healthcare transformation could look like.

This week I’m looking at what a likely change of government means for Technology & Transformation leaders, and industry at large.

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Healthcare is a key manifesto pledge for the Labour government-elect. They inherit a 7.5m strong NHS waiting list, with a growing number of referral-to-appointment waiting times about the 18-week standard. It’s widely acknowledged that the NHS is inefficient and is in a desperate state of neglect. Change will incredibly difficult and various Shadow Ministers have talked about a ‘Ten year programme of renewal’ – given the NHS employs over 1.5m professionals, this is one key area that falls into that ‘Ten Years to fix’ areas.

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So where is the opportunity for the Tech & Transformational leaders & businesses in general?

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First of all, there is likely to be major Organisational Transformation of many of the local & national NHS bodies looks certain.

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For example, reform of Primary Care services to pursue a ‘prevention is better than the cure’ strategy. An example the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer cites in his campaign interviews is a lack of Dental Services meaning 6 in 10 children’s hospital appointments are rotten teeth being pulled.

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Expect reform of the NHS Trusts, which means Change & Transformation offices being setup. Such a strategy is more than just reform of existing services; like all transformation programmes, this will require a significant mindset shift.

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In terms of efficiency, one route could see increased levels of Shared Services being created at local / regional levels.

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There is opportunity for Private Healthcare providers to support the outsourced delivery of NHS services to reduce waiting lists. As certain providers gain contracts, again expect the larger ones to invest into technology that will integrate with NHS systems. They’ll need to ensure compliance with NHS healthcare regulations.

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The previous Labour administration invested heavily in the largely failed Connecting for Health (CfH) tech programme, designed to put all Healthcare bodies on unified platforms, with fully uniform, fully integrated healthcare systems. The theory was to reduce breakdown of communication between Primary Care services (i.e. GPs or Dentists), Acute Services (Hospitals & Specialist Services) and Care Services (i.e. Community Nursing) but this ultimately wasn’t delivered. The argument set out at the start of the programme, was that the technology architectures did not exist to support something of that scale, plus the Department for Health had procured it’s vendor partners very badly – it had allowed itself to be tied into commercial agreements that favoured the Systems Integrators that they employed to deliver CfH.?

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However, with the advent of Cloud, microservices architectures, improved programme & project delivery approaches and procurement practices (thanks to the Conservatives creation of the Government Digital Service arm of the Cabinet Office), such a programme which has been mooted again Wes Streeting, appears to be a lot of more achievable.

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As such, NHS Digital and it’s ecosystem of partners could stand to be beneficiaries.

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Increased reliance on digital services does bring risks in the form of cyber attacks! We have seen several instances of Russian-backed Cyber Hacker groups attacking NHS Trusts and Healthcare System providers. Risks like these, should create opportunities for Cyber Security firms to support NHS Trusts and Tech providers with advisory and remediation services.

?One one of the biggest suppliers to the NHS for systems is TPP who provide the SystmOne patient care system. Owned by the controversial Frank Hester who has made significant political donations to the Conservative Party, he was exposed earlier this year for making racist comments about a Labour MP, Diane Abbott. It will be interesting to see if TPP retain their supply contracts under a Labour government.