Chris Whitehouse, a political consultant and expert on medical technology policy and regulation at Whitehouse Communications, an advisor to MedTech suppliers, chair of the Urology Trade Association, and governor of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, reports on steps to facilitate innovation in MedTech.
A new ‘innovator passport’ will slash red tape so that cutting-edge tech can in future be rolled out across the NHS faster, according to government, as part of the widely trailed 10 Year Health Plan, publication of which is imminent. The passport is intended to be one feature of a new MedTech “Compass”, a digital platform currently under development to deliver Value Based Procurement in MedTech across the NHS in England.
“The new digital system will mean companies can innovate faster and patients can get pioneering tech as soon as it’s ready to be rolled out, providing a major boost to the Life Sciences sector, creating an NHS fit for future under the Plan for Change”, says the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
The new ‘innovator passport’ – to be introduced over next two years – is intended to allow new technology that has been ‘robustly’ assessed by one NHS organisation to be easily rolled out to others.
For too long, says the DHSC, cutting edge businesses deserted working with the NHS and went elsewhere, weighed down by slow timelines and reams of processes. Now, organisations will be able to join up with the NHS quicker than ever before through the removal of needless bureaucracy, improving patient care, reducing NHS costs and delivering economic growth.
At Barts Health Trust in London, the use of antimicrobial protective coverings for cardiac devices cut infections and saved over £103,000 per year. At University Hospitals Dorset, adopting rapid influenza testing reduced bed days and antibiotic use, freeing up vital resources. MedTech Compass will make these innovations, and the evidence underpinning them, clear to buyers within the NHS.
But, there is concern on the part of many in the MedTech sector that the leading NHS procurement organisation, NHS Supply Chain, appears institutionally reluctant to accept “real world” data and case studies produced in NHS facilities with manufacturer support. A potential problem with Compass might yet be the setting of evidential hurdles unrealistically high, leading to an over-emphasis on item price, rather than value in terms of patient experience and outcomes – the very problem that the project is intended to solve, according to the outcomes of the DHSC’s own “discovery phase” for the project.
A further challenge is that individual NHS organisations seem reluctant to accept the experience and outcomes of other NHS organisations, arguing that their patient demographics and treatment pathways mean that learnings and outcomes data are not necessarily transferable from one area to another. This is potentially compounded by procurement being seen as a separate process, driven by the incentive to reduce purchasing expenditure, rather than driven by the incentive to secure improved patient experience and outcomes, and so reduce substantially the whole system cost to NHS and social care.
Overcoming these hurdles will require a paradigm shift in the whole NHS and social care procurement system, which should be driven by early clinician input to define the patient outcomes against the achievement of which products should be assessed for value, not price, and crucially in consultation and partnership with patients themselves.
Despite the Department arguing that the Compass project is part of the Government’s recently published Modern Industrial Strategy, there is frustration that the promised, sector-specific, Life Sciences Sector Plan, intended to set out detailed steps to be taken by Government to support the sector, has so far been delayed, reportedly due to negotiations with the pharmaceutical sector.
The Author used AI in preparing this article, comments upon or questions about which can be addressed to chris.whitehouse@whitehousecomms.com.
