Showcase for healthcare innovation

Widespread adoption of innovation is a key priority for the NHS and the event will play an important part in spreading new and existing ideas across the NHS, with the aim of delivering improvements in quality and value, as well as driving economic growth.

All the signs point to a new era of rapid, exciting transformation in the NHS, according to Miles Ayling, director of innovation and service improvement at the Department of Health. “We have come a very long way in a relatively short space of time. I believe that the current emphasis on innovation – and its widespread diffusion – is starting to make a real difference,” he commented. “Things are undoubtedly improving. Ideas are spreading faster and people are becoming more responsive to them. It is very positive.” In 2008, Lord Darzi’s milestone ‘Next Stage Review’ appeared, heralding the move from “an NHS that has rightly focused on increasing the quantity of care to one that focuses on improving the quality of care”. The role of innovation in that process was further highlighted in Sir David Nicholson’s report Innovation, Health and Wealth; accelerating adoption and diffusion in the NHS, published in 2011.

Innovation at the core of the NHS Accelerated change, he stressed, was not so much a goal as an absolute necessity. The difficult financial climate, coupled with the NHS’s drive to produce £20 bn of efficiency savings by 2015, demanded it. So did the additional pressures brought on by an increasing population with a longer lifespan, rising public expectations and constant scientific and technological advances. “This means that simply doing more of what we have always done is no longer an option,” Sir David Nicholson said in the report. “We need to do things differently. We need to radically transform the way we deliver services. Innovation is the way – the only way – we can meet these challenges. Innovation must become core business for the NHS.” No one attending Healthcare Innovation Expo in London will need convincing. Organised by the Department of Health, and aimed at the NHS and its key strategic partners, the event – the largest of its kind in Europe – will offer a platform for examples of products, processes and technologies that are beginning to revolutionise the way health and social care are delivered. More than 250 exhibitors will be on show at the ExCel centre, 13-14 March. There will be some 100 expert-led seminars, while headline speakers will include Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and NHS Chief Executive, Sir David Nicholson.