VoyageMD and the House of Lords

Last week VoyageMD had the honour and privilege of meeting with a small number of members of the House of Lords in London. The meeting was organised by the Association of British Healthcare Industries (ABHI) (http://www.abhi.org.uk/) and took place at the House of Commons. The ABHI is the industry association for the medical technology sector in the UK, aiming to facilitate the adoption of medical technologies to ensure optimum patient outcomes for the UK and beyond. This UK industry has more than 3000 companies, employing over 64,000 people with a turnover £15 Billion. 

Following last year’s publication of the NHS Chief Executive’s review of innovation uptake in the NHS, entitled ‘Innovation, Health and Wealth’, and at a time when the NHS is expected to make considerable efficiency savings, there are opportunities for the technology industry to help improve patient outcomes and at the same time reduce the financial burden for the NHS

Unsurprisingly the main topic of discussion focussed around technology and diabetes and a number of themes emerged:

Access: In the area of access to insulin pump therapy the UK has an unenviable reputation. Insulin pump therapy has been around for a number of years, has a solid evidence base and has been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (http://guidance.nice.org.uk/TA151) yet access to this form of insulin delivery is not equitable across the UK. It still depends on where you live! In a nutshell there are still a number of specialist diabetes centres in the UK that "don't do pumps" or have a limited number available. VoyageMD suggested that it may be an option to consider developing supra-regional pump centres that can offer assessment, pump initiation and on-going follow up for the first 12 months with the use of web-portals and other forms of digital communication to support on-going care once a patient returns to their usual point-of-care. Basic and high level training would also be offered by these centres. Controversially their Lordships were interested in whether this model would allow more patients to continue to have their care managed in the community.

Evaluation of New Technologies: The UK should be the gateway to Europe for new companies and established companies with new devices. The idea would be to create an environment whereby industry could have access to clinicians and patients at an early stage to facilitate device development especially the user "experience" - in other words make devices that (a) work (b) produce benefit and (c) patients will keep using. Their Lordships also touched upon the need to consider better regulation as recently suggested by the European Association for the Study of Diabetes following the PIP breast implant scandal.

Partnerships: A number of headlines in the media have highlighted deficiencies in diabetes care as well as the continued growth in the number of people developing the condition. Technology has an opportunity to promote behaviour change, encourage self-monitoring and provide "big data"  - the so-called quantified self philosophy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/02/psychology-human-biology). However to achieve progress there will need to be more partnerships between clinicians, patients and industry. Their Lordships appeared to be particularly interested in creating training programs for clinicians to provide training end expertise in clinical medicine, scientific methods and business - the latter giving insights into taking an idea, developing it and bringing it to market. More information on the UK Governments views on this are about to be unveiled in the forthcoming Life Science Strategy publication.

The discussion also covered other topics including the role of social media to improve diabetes care,  funding for the NHS in general and the need for new approaches to deal with increasing number of elderly people living with multiple chronic medical conditions.

A great deal was covered in the 3 hours and VoyageMD was delighted with the level of interest shown by the peers in encouraging more technological solutions for diabetes and other conditions. There was no sense of politicising the discussion for the benefit of one party or another rather a sense of "we are in this together". Further discussions are planned and VoyageMD will keep you up to date.