Effective innovation key for NHS affordability

A new report by the International Longevity Centre has found that the NHS is often not doing enough with the innovative tools at its disposal.

The report, Towards affordable healthcare: Why effective innovation is key, analyses how health care innovations could reduce costs in the NHS by £18.5 billion and £6.3 billion in social care, as well as increase productivity.

Showcasing seven outstanding global and UK-based innovations with a strong evidence base of demonstrable success, the report calculates the savings that could be achieved by implementing them across the UK - including up to £38 million between 2019-2030 through the UK’s Memory First Project, run by a consortium of GPs across Staffordshire, and up to £5.6 billion between 2014-2030 through a programme of providing the training and equipment to perform home dialysis, as used by Manchester Royal Infirmary.

The report concludes that social care is underfunded and fragmented, which has consequences also for NHS costs, and a continual slow uptake in the UK of new drugs and treatments, with adoption speed varying across the country, highlights how ‘the UK is often not doing enough with the tools at its disposal to implement such innovations’.

The report presents three simple scenarios for future UK health care costs based on projections for demographic change, the rate of productivity growth in the economy, and the degree to which innovations are implemented, thus reducing residual costs.

Sally-Marie Bamford, research and strategy director, said: “Whilst the UK has a strong history of innovation in the field of healthcare, the UK is at a crossroads. We have world-leading higher education and research institutions, and some of the most cutting-edge health tech start-ups are emerging from the UK. However, social care has for too long played second fiddle to the NHS, and a financially unsustainable model of adult social care has a knock-on effect in terms of NHS sustainability.”