NHS are set to introduce a new ‘innovator passport’, which will allow new technology that has been assessed and approved by one NHS organisation to seamlessly be rolled out to others.
This remedies a long-time problem of multiple compliance assessments preventing cutting-edge treatments and technologies from reaching trusts cross the country. Delivered through MedTech Compass, this will allow businesses to get to work as quickly as possible and deliver on what matters most to patients across the UK.
As a result of slow timelines and repeated assessments, pioneering businesses abandoned working with the NHS and went elsewhere, but through scrapping bureaucracy, a new digital system will mean that patients can receive new technology as soon its ready. Once a healthcare tool has been assessed by one NHS organisation, further NHS organisations will not be able to insist on repeated assessments, reducing the need for local NHS systems to spend their limited resource on bureaucratic processes that have already been completed elsewhere.
Treatments including special would dressings, already reducing surgical site infections by 38 per cent at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, could be adopted more widely. Additionally, at University Hospitals Dorset, adopting rapid influenza testing reduced bed days and antibiotic use, freeing up vital resources. MedTech Compass will make these innovations, and the evidence underpinning them, clear to buyers within the NHS.
Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for health and social care, said “For too long, Britain’s leading scientific minds have been help back by needless admin that means suppliers are repeatedly asked for the same data in different formats by different trusts—this is bad for the NHS, patients and bad for business.
“These innovator passports will save time and reduce duplication, meaning our life sciences sector—a central part of our 10 Year Health Plan—can work hand in hand with the health service and make Britain a powerhouse for medical technology.
“Frustrated patients will no longer have to face a postcode lottery for lifesaving products to be introduced in their area and companies will be able to get their technology used across the NHS more easily, creating a health service fit for future under the Plan for Change.”
