Health: Chief Medical Officer’s Recommendations

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor]

My Lords, as I said, the Government take very seriously the CMO’s recommendations and in previous years have taken them on board. The Government are striving to address the inequalities, and, as we said in the Statement on the NHS plan, £4.5 billion is going into the preventive agenda through increased investment in primary medical and community care. We are addressing inequalities in obesity and are looking to reduce by 2030 the gap in obesity between children from the most and least deprived areas.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, one of the best ways to reduce health inequalities is to make sure that we have truly personalised medicine—which the CMO references in her report. She talks about health being transformed by 2040 by integrating biomedicine, technology and behavioural sciences. Can my noble friend say what the NHS is doing to embrace the innovations that will lead to this kind of healthcare?

[Baroness Manzoor]

My noble friend is absolutely right: emerging technologies will transform healthcare and are doing so already. Variables can transform the prevention, diagnosis and management of long-term conditions such as diabetes. Indeed, information from monitors worn by patients with atrial fibrillation can be downloaded by their clinicians. We are also looking at more creative solutions regarding artificial intelligence, which will go a long way to improving the healthcare of patients.