UK Prime Minister Theresa May has outlined ambitions to position the UK ‘at the forefront’ of the Artificial Intelligence revolution in healthcare.
The comments were made during a speech in London today, marking the announcement that NHS England’s budget would increase by an average of 3.4% each year until 2023/24 to ‘keep pace with growing pressures’, ahead of its 70th anniversary, in a deal agreed between the PM, the Chancellor and Health and Social Care Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
“We cannot continue to put a sticking plaster on the NHS budget each year, so we will do more than simply give the NHS a one-off injection of cash,” Mrs May said.
As the funding boost will only apply to the NHS England budget and not the wider Department of Health and Social Care, writing on Twitter, MP Sarah Wollaston, Chair of the Health and Social Care committee, said:
“I welcome the uplift but this will not deliver as planned without attention to and uplifts for public health (prevention), social care, workforce training & capital/transformation budgets.”
3.4% average increase is for NHSEngland only. I welcome the uplift but this will not deliver as planned without attention to and uplifts for public health (prevention), social care, workforce training & capital/transformation budgets
— Sarah Wollaston MP (@sarahwollaston) June 17, 2018
The PM’s remarks that the increase would partly be funded by a ‘Brexit dividend’ sparked widespread criticism towards the end of last week. Today, Mrs May admitted that tax rises would be needed to support the funding boost.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, the Health and Social Care Secretary said:
“We are being very clear that there are implications for the tax burden, because in the end if you want the NHS to be the safest and one of the highest-quality systems in the world, faced with these demographic changes we are going to spend more money.”
Details will be set out in due course, but the government now needs to agree with the NHS a 10-year plan to ensure ‘every penny is well spent’.
“It must be a plan that tackles waste, reduces bureaucracy and eliminates unacceptable variation, with all these efficiency savings reinvested back into patient care,” the PM said, outlining five key areas:
- Patient-centred care
- An empowered workforce
- Increased focus on prevention
- Mental health
- Harnessing the power of innovation.
“We have the opportunity to lead the world in the use of data and technology to prevent illness, not just treat it, to diagnose conditions before symptoms occur and to deliver personalised treatment informed not just by general understanding of disease, but by your own data, including your genetic makeup.
“Our long-term plan for the NHS needs to view technology as more than supporting what the NHS is doing already. It must expand the boundaries of what the NHS can do in the future in the fastest, safest, most ambitious way possible,” the PM added.
Last week, BJ-HC reported that the government launched a £50m competition to create a network of up to six digital pathology and imaging centres using advanced digital technologies, including AI, to develop innovative diagnostic tools and treatments.
