Healthcare Sector: Clinicians
Lord Hintze Excerpts(5 days, 14 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, we are committed to supporting NHS staff to innovate and translate new ideas into improved patient care. We have recommissioned the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme for a further five years. We have also published NHS intellectual property guidance for NHS staff and organisations, which was last updated 24 years ago. Healthcare innovators can also benefit from the wider investment into innovation that is outlined within the 10-year health plan and the life sciences sector plan.
Noble Lords
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I certainly agree with my noble friend that there is a rich seam of intellectual capital among the 1.5 million NHS staff in our country. I am glad to say that the clinical entrepreneur programme is already a world leader in healthcare entrepreneurship, as my noble friend looks for. It has supported over 1,800 NHS staff and 690 start-ups, and it has raised more than £1.2 billion. We have now doubled the baseline annual funding for the programme. Yes, I agree that a clear pathway to adoption is vital, so we are expanding the health innovation networks, because they will provide the necessary support.
Lord Hintze (Con)
My Lords, I apologise to the Minister and to the House for my breach of protocol. There is a serious question here. Innovation is a very important part of what the NHS does, and it is very good at it, but I am keen to understand what we are doing to allow our consultants and doctors to innovate to get the backlog under control. I speak from personal experience, but I am not going to talk about my hip, my heart, my kidneys, and goodness knows what else. The point is that many of these individuals cannot clear their backlog because they fear that they are going to be hauled before the CEO of the NHS for breaching their budget. That is an issue.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
That is exactly the reason why we need to encourage innovation and take advantage of all the improvements now available to us, including AI. It is by modernising our approach that we will move forward greatly. That is why we are building the practicalities, as I described in my Answer just now, as well as a culture of innovation. We are also providing the ability to see adoption, because people are rightly concerned if time is spent on innovation but the product or service never comes forward. We are changing a number of points to improve that.