Medical Treatments: Innovation

(asked on 15th January 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policy of the Medical Technology Group’s 2017 report, Keeping Britain Working: how medical technology can help reduce the cost of ill health to the UK economy; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 23rd January 2018

We recognise the argument in the Medical Technology Groups report that more can and should be done to accelerate access to patients those medical technologies that have been evidenced to save money.

Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability, published in November 2017, demonstrates that the Government recognises that new advances in technology offer more opportunities than ever before to improve outcomes for disabled people and people with long-term health conditions and that it is for the Government to help set the direction and stimulate good ideas.

Further, the response to the Accelerated Access Review set out how partners across the health system will work together to ensure innovative technologies, including devices and diagnostics, can reach patients quickly at a price that the National Health Service can afford.

As part of this, a new Accelerated Access Pathway will be introduced, to streamline regulatory and market access decisions, getting breakthrough products that we believe will be truly transformative to patients more quickly. A new Accelerated Access Collaborative chaired by Sir Andrew Witty, will develop and own the Accelerated Access Pathway which will be operational from April 2018. All products including medical technologies, devices and diagnostics will be eligible for selection.

In addition to the new Pathway, we are providing funding of up to £86 million for United Kingdom firms to develop and test new technologies in the NHS. This could include innovations such as digital technologies to help patients manage their conditions from home instead of a hospital, or to develop new medicines.

Reticulating Splines