The UK Health Show is the UK’s leading live event platform connecting senior healthcare decision makers, influencers and buyers from across the NHS and the entire UK healthcare sector. Health Business previews the themes of September’s event
The UK Health Show focuses on four of the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the modern healthcare system and delivers this through four main conferences, a further seven seminars and a trade show floor feature 180 leading partners and suppliers.
With support and contributions from the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, NHS Digital, NHS Improvement and the World Health Organisation, in 2018 the UK Health Show will feature the conferences of: Healthcare Efficiency through Technology; Commissioning in Healthcare; Procurement in Healthcare; and Cyber Security in Healthcare.
The Digital Challenge
The Healthcare Efficiency through Technology (HETT) and Cybersecurity in Healthcare (CSIH) conferences, which are running concurrently at the UK Health Show, are ready to set the tone of discussion for the coming year. Interwoven themes covering a broad range of topics from artificial intelligence, interoperability, electronic health records, information governance and institutional readiness for future attacks are scheduled to be addressed over the two-day event.
The UK Health Show will recognise the connected nature of many of these challenges and just how important it is to adopt a holistic view of the health sector. Siloed thinking will not solve the existing problems nor set in place the preventative measures needed.
The show has been working closely with NHS Digital to deliver both the HETT and CSIH plenary programmes, with Noel Gordon, chair NHS Digital, chairing day 1 of the Digital NHS Stage and Cleveland Henry, programme director for Innovation, Digital Futures and Digital Collaboration Service, chairing day 2.
As the flagship conference element, HETT will be bringing together a range of high profile speakers from across the NHS, private and third sectors, including NHS England’s CIO Will Smart, who will be discussing the ongoing challenge of system wide interoperability and whether that specifically is the greatest challenge to successful roll out of new IT systems.
Data is the word
Increasing digitisation generates vast quantities of new data. Data is the operative word of the day and to find an authoritative voice to provide guidance look no further than the Digital NHS Stage where on Day 1 will be Dr Ramesh Krishnamurthy, senior advisor at the World Health Organisation, who is an international expert on interoperability, e-Health and delivering strategic operational implementation of e-Health projects. Dr Krishnamurthy will be setting out a vision for the NHS on delivering a truly interoperable Health Information System (HIS) and drawing on his long experience.
To complete this systemic view and to complement the operational delivery of new data-driven transformation projects including artificial intelligence, e-Health records and interoperability, the immediate follow up is often ‘who safeguards the data?’. This topic will be addressed in the Cyber Security Symposium where Dame Fiona Caldicott, National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care, will be covering information governance, national data opt-outs and patient control of their data. To understand the importance of data management, the NHS has reportedly spent in excess of £1 million to become GDPR compliant.
To contextualise the issue further, in healthcare, the expansion of information systems, and because of this the raw amount, intricacy and assessment of data has become increasingly hard to manage. Especially in the NHS where a fragmented organisational system is battling to collaborate in key areas that have been strategically devolved to local organisations.
On this, Ben Bridgewater, the CEO of Health Innovation Manchester will be presenting on the Local Health and Care Record Exemplars (LHCREs) on the Digital NHS Stage, seeking to shed some light on the challenges that Manchester have faced and how they are pioneering innovative solutions.
As systems become more complex however, and despite these systems contributing to increasing the quality of healthcare delivery, the information sources are distributed, diverse in character, large and complex. The Health Information Systems (HIS) need to communicate to share information and to make it available at any place at any time. Therefore, it emerges the need to create a global system that brings together all the islands of information shared between services. It is necessary to develop a solid and efficient process of integration and interoperation that must take into consideration scalability, flexibility, portability and security.
The NHS has developed a clear and actionable plan to manage these new data challenges, which is something that Dan Taylor, head of the Data Security Centre at NHS Digital, will be covering in the Cyber Security Symposium. Themes will include what the Data Security Centre has already begun to do in the wake of the WannaCry attack, the ongoing CareCERT programme and outlining a wider vision of cybersecurity for the NHS.
Commissioning for the Future
The commissioning landscape has never been short of transformation initiatives and new models of care. Now, transformation has reached a new era of reform with attention shifting towards integrated care systems (ICSs) and integrated care organisations (ICOs), modelled on the accountable care organisations (ACOs) introduced in the USA with the ultimate goal being to defragment a historically siloed health and care system.
However, with this vision comes great challenges that create hurdles to collaboration. Some of the most formidable ones include how to get everyone on the same page; how to manage complex contracts; aligning priorities; expectations and funding across all stakeholders; and how to create the capacity to share local patient care records across all components of the system.
Bringing these transformation plans to life, Commissioning in Healthcare will be joined by a collection of esteemed exhibiting partners, each working in tandem with the health and care sector to overcome these challenges. Closely aligned to the HETT elements of the UK Health Show, the array of exhibiting companies on display offer digital technology platforms and solutions for systems integration and contract management creating the perfect environment to conduct direct business, network and share best practice.
Conference content will feature expert strategic and operational insights from leading health and care professionals from across the UK, driving forwards the government’s integration strategy. Sir Malcolm Grant, chair at NHS England and Sarah Pickup, deputy chair at Local Government Association, set the scene with opening discussion on supporting sustainable transformation and integration.
Sandwiched with case studies on devolution and ICOs, Sir Robert Naylor, author of the Review of NHS Property and Estates headlines in an unmissable panel discussion on NHS Estates following the government’s pledge of £760 million capital funding for STPs to transform buildings and services.
All-in-all the show serves to provide health and care professionals with the tools to enable them to assure successful commissioning for the future.
Procurement transformation in action
Following Lord Carter’s 2015 review, procurement transformation fast became the key focus for NHS Improvement and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). With cost savings of a possible £5 billion projected from Lord Carter’s review by reducing unwarranted variation, NHS trusts have since been tasked with delivering this these efficiency savings and as a whole have made over £250 million of savings up to September 2017 through changes in procurement.
Many of these savings were established through programmes such as the introduction of Scan4safety (which has already resulted in over £700,000 worth of savings), the introduction of GS1 standards (will allow an average saving of £3 million each year for each NHS trust in England), with a further annual saving of £268 million proposed by adoption of the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme.
The most recent change however comes from the introduction of the Future Operating Model, a new system to replace the original NHS Supply Chain set to realise £615 million of savings in real terms over the next three years, scheduled for launch in March 2019.
The Procurement in Healthcare conference at the UK Health Show brings together key procurement and finance professionals with industry suppliers to engage, connect and trade, conducting strategic level business designed to propel their trust towards realising the mammoth savings they are tasked with. With providers of managed services, facilitators in technology procurement, e-procurement providers and direct suppliers of goods to the NHS, Procurement in Healthcare provides a one-stop-shop for those looking to improve NHS productivity through procurement excellence.
Delivering 14 hours’ worth of content across the two days, the Procurement Transformation main stage will host keynote presentations from sector thought leaders including, Lord Carter of Coles, Non-Executive Director at NHS Improvement and senior representatives from the Supply Chain Co-ordination Limited (SCCL) and DHSC. Each keynote will divulge unique thought-provoking insight into the direction of national strategy and what the Future Operating Model will mean for trusts and suppliers across the country.
The UK Health Show takes place on 25 and 26 September 2018 at ExCeL London.
