In the week the NHS turns 75, the health and social care secretary Steve Barclay will gather ministers and sector leaders at the NHS recovery summit to discuss plans to slash waiting lists and drive forward patient care.
Experts from the third sector will join top clinicians and government officials in roundtable sessions on everything from elective and primary care to emergency and adult social care.
The summit will have a particular focus on how technology is catalysing advancements in patient care and how it can be further and better adopted to leverage even more benefits.
Some of the technology that will be showcased will include DERM AI, an innovation being used to assess skin lesion for cancer within the NHS which has been shown to have a 99.7% accuracy rating.
Other examples include the technology known as Rezum which uses water vapour to treat enlarged prostates and circumvents the need for overnight admissions as patients can be treated as outpatients. The designs for Hospital 2.0 will also be demonstrated through the eyes of virtual reality headsets.
Responding to the news, NHS Providers’ director of strategy and policy, Miriam Deakin, said that although the new technologies have the potential to have a huge impact, their success will be reliant on digital teams getting the funding they need to properly harness the innovations.
“It will be important too that as new technologies are rolled out, the needs of patients and their families are put front and centre to ensure these new services are trusted by everyone,” added Deakin.
“It is also vital that the opportunities presented by technology in the NHS to transform care for patients and improve access to services is not at the expense of the critical need to invest in core digital and IT infrastructure across the NHS or in developing the skills of NHS and care professionals skills, who will adapt to these new ways of working.”
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