4 April 2019
Highlights from Matt Hancock's speech at The Royal Society of Medicine event 'Medical apps: mainstreaming innovation'. We must drive tech innovation and improvement across the NHS and DHSC News item NHSX: digital experts will be part of cancer and mental health teams
- NHSX is a new specialist unit that brings together tech leadership from the DHSC, NHS England and NHSI into one place. Setting national policy for NHS tech, digital and data and standards that work across the whole of health and care.
- NHSX will be led by the government’s digital policy chief, Matthew Gould, and become operational in July. In the interim it will be led by a senior team from NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care.
- NHSX will have 3 early priorities:
- ensuring tech saves time for staff so they can focus on patients.
- giving patients the tools to access information and services directly.
- creating a system that means patient information can be accessed, safely and reliably, wherever it is needed.
- From July, NHSX will mandate the use of internationally recognised technology and data standards across the NHS to ensure all systems can talk to each other.
- To test a new way of working, tech experts from NHSX will be embedded in national cancer, mental health and urgent care teams to bring the benefits of modern technology to every patient, clinician, and carer.
- The digital experts will support NHS England's cancer and mental health national policy teams in:
- making it easier for patients to access services through smartphones
- giving clinicians access to the relevant diagnostic information about a patient
- making it easier to collect and use health data which can benefit research and patient
