Trade association techUK has published a plan setting out 10 recommendations to accelerate the digitalisation of the health and care sector.

The Ten Point Plan aims to ensure digital technology is at the forefront of improving outcomes for citizens and transforming how care is delivered nationally.

It focuses on empowering the public, embedding standards and interoperability, digitising social care, supporting the health and social care workforce and reforming business environment and procurement.

Among the recommendations, it calls for the Department of Health and Social Care to centrally mandate, assess, and enforce the use of interoperability standards through NHSX and NHS Digital, and collate a single, searchable interoperability standards registry.

It also recommends health secretary Matt Hancock to implement plans to establish the role of the Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) in law.

The plan was created in collaboration with techUK members and healthtech companies, as well drawing on the techUK’s work with representatives across NHSX, NHS Digital, the Professional Record Standards Body, INTEROPen, Health Education England, the NHS Digital Academy and the Shuri Network.

WHY IT MATTERS

Digital technology has played a central role to the delivery of health and care during the COVID-19 crisis and allocated budget investment on digital transformation is set to improve the health and social care sector long-term.

The Ten Point Plan reinforces the importance of working collaboratively with industry to build a world-leading digital health and care service.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Last April, techUK attended a roundtable with the Prime Minister, Matthew Gould, Dr Simon Eccles and others from the NHS and NHSX to outline the country’s urgent technology needs during the pandemic and feed them back to the health tech sector.

ON THE RECORD

Julian David, techUK CEO, said: “The health of the population is the highest priority, and this document offers an essential roadmap for working in partnership with the system to improve the delivery of care across the board.”   

Andreas Haimböck-Tichy, chair of the techUK Health and social care council; director, healthcare & life sciences, IBM UK and Ireland, said: “As we look ahead to the rest of 2021, these recommendations also provide the bedrock for a raft of possible reforms to ensure the UK provides excellent health and social care services to its citizens and is an attractive place for healthtech businesses.”

Victoria Betton, vice chair of the techUK Health and social care council; chief innovation officer, Mindwave Ventures, said: “With input from a wide range of industry experts, this paper goes a long way to cast an examining eye on the longstanding challenges that have held back health care for years.”

David Hancock at software vendor, InterSystems, said: “What shines through in this report is that industry, Government, and the NHS, and social care all share these really hard problems that we want to solve and it is only by working together and truly co-producing solutions will we be successful.”