Science and Technology Committee

Tuesday 7th July 2026

(began 2 months, 2 weeks ago)

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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Yes. Thank you so much, chair, and thank you for the opportunity to give evidence today. As you know, we're at a really important moment, I would say, for the NHS, because innovation isn't just about new technology. It's about how do we actually improve outcomes for patients, how do we support the workforce, and how do we build a health service that is able to prevent illness earlier and clearly deliver care more effectively?And that's the premise by which I approach this. Um, I think when we talk about innovation, I think it is important to separate the two areas.

Whilst they're often discussed together and I get why they are, but they're not the same. You've got personalised medicine and then you've got artificial intelligence. And so um they are both built on of course the advances of science of data and technology. But, but I suppose they answer different questions. So let me take those separately. So personalised medicine is about patients getting the right treatment to the right person at the right time. And we know that healthcare has often relied far too much on a one size fits all approach.

But every patient is different. You know, our genetics, our biology and how we respond to treatment can actually vary significantly. And I think the opportunity to use some of the advances in genomics and life sciences, um, to better understand these differences so we can actually predict risk earlier. We can prevent avoidable harm, and we can provide treatments that are far more effective for individual patients. And that's why personalised medicine, as you said, chair, is such an important part of the government's ten year plan.

Um, and I suppose a good example of this, because I think it's always good to kind of have a real life example of like, what does personalised care look like?Farmer, farmer coach genomics, um, is a really good example because we know that some babies, for example, carry a genetic variant, which puts them at a much more higher risk of permanent hearing loss if they receive certain antibiotics, for example, and the work that the near the Manchester Biomedical Research Centre did is that we now have a rapid test that can identify that risk before treatment is actually given.

Um, that's really, I think, a powerful example of what personalised medicines means in practice. Um, and then we're also seeing huge opportunities in cancer pathways. And I'm sure you're, uh, committee has heard some of that evidence, but the NHS cancer vaccine launch pad, which was have a rapid test that can identify that risk before treatment is actually given. And I'm sure you're, uh, committee has heard some of that evidence, but the NHS cancer vaccine launch pad, which was have a rapid test that can identify that risk before treatment is actually given.

Um, that's really, I think, a powerful example of what personalised medicines means in practice. Um, and then we're also seeing huge opportunities in cancer pathways. And I'm sure you're, uh, committee has heard some of that evidence, but the NHS cancer vaccine launch pad, which was established three years ago, is actually helping accelerate access to personalised cancer treatments with clinical trials. Uh, and we're working with industry partners like BioNTech, for example, and we want to provide up to ten 000 patients here in the United Kingdom with personalised cancer immunotherapies by 2030.

Um, and patients that are undergoing treatment, for example, at the moment can access clinical trials. That is really important that they have the opportunity to be part of, uh, trials. Um, it widens access, of course, across NHS trusts and then artificial intelligence, as you said, is, is quite a different opportunity. And I want to say and make it clear, AI is not about replacing clinicians because far too often this is a concern and a genuine concern, which I take on board. But it is about giving clinicians better tools.

Um, whether it's making decisions, whether it's reducing some of the unnecessary burden and freeing up some of their time so that they can focus on patients. And a good example of this at the moment, which I'm very excited about, is ambient ambient voice technology. Uh, this is supporting clinicians by helping them, by helping with note taking during appointments. That means they can have eye to eye contact. They can be actively listening with patients at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, the trials have suggested that we're saving around five minutes per patient.

I mean, that might seem quite small, but actually, if you think about the millions of appointments, um, it means that actually clinicians can face can spend more time on care. For example, um, and NHS England is supporting some of the safe scaling of these technologies, um through the frontline productivity programme, which is starting in outpatient settings. Um, and we're learning what works before we roll it out. And I think that is really important. Um, that is the approach we want. We don't just want pilots that never spread, but innovation that is properly evaluated, and then it's adopted at scale.

And that is the approach that we are going to be taking. Um, we want the, I want, and the government wants the NHS to be the most enabled AI health system in the world. Um, and that ambition has got to come with responsibility. So let me finally, before I bring in my officials say the. Vision isn't just simply, you know, can we use AI?The question is how do we use it safely?How do we use it effectively?And in a way that, I suppose patients and clinicians trust, because that is really important.

Um, you know, so the key challenge I would say is that, um, AI can. Change over time. We see technology advancing far quicker than we can keep up to date. So one of the things that we're doing is we recognise that a single assessment at one moment is not enough. And that's why we need a kind of a life cycle approach to how we adopt AI into the NHS. That means assessing it before deployment. It means monitoring how it performs in real NHS settings.

So we have examples understanding what are the benefits and what are the potential risks. Um and ensuring that we are continuously evaluating and have clear accountability. Because I know that this is the thing on many constituents mind when I speak to them about their data and about, you know, what happened. So the evidence threshold has got to be proportionate. Um, but I recognise we need to enable innovation. And that's why the work on the national AI roadmap, this is the regulatory framework.

And it's Professor Alastair Dennison's review are going to be really important in actually helping us build a system where innovation and safety move much more closer together. I think the opportunity is really significant. I think personalized medicine just allows us from treating the average patient to treating the individual. And, you know, both are essential to the future of healthcare. And thank.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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Lung, lung cancer.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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It's a bit more than.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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Course.
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None Portrait Speaker 6
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Yeah, I wanted to pick up on some of the I o points. It's a really rapidly developing technology. I think you all know that. I think the public know that as well. But its application is very specific around the specific use that you want to apply it to. And that, I think is where some of the complexity is. And you can't just take AI and uniformly throw it at a system and then expect it to stick.

You have to look at specifically what you're trying to do. And I'll give you three different examples of work that we're doing right now just to highlight the difference. So I'm going to come back to the ambient voice technology element. Plastic piece of labour saving. Uh, technology. There. Uh, my visits to acute and general district hospitals has been unequivocally supportive of its deployment. When I speak to clinical people in emergency departments and elective care, they are both very, very, uh, adamant and demonstrate that as a labour saving device, it is highly effective.

That's very, very different to a speech to text, uh, old style piece of technology. It's able to be, it's able to identify contexts and communicate and summarise in a really elegant way. And demonstrably, demonstrably, probably 2 to 3 minutes time saving on a ten minute consultation for elective up to 30 to 50% time saving for the clinical person in an Ed department. The most important point that is non, uh, efficiency is the removal of the cognitive load on the clinical person, though. That's the thing that really jumped out at me instead of instead of them being sat there trying to listen to somebody whilst simultaneously trying to diagnose and understand while simultaneously trying to figure out what it is they might type, whilst also simultaneously typing.

They're able to give the the person in front of them their whole attention, that the patient has a better experience. They can enact their job in a far more effective and elegant way as well. So I think there's a really qualitative, uh, beneficial aspect to AVT. I would say it's not a particularly sophisticated application of AI, but it is very, very productive and useful. And I think that underlines probably where in some regard the health system is at the moment, we are in the foothills of using AI.

We're exploring where we can use it most effectively. And understandably, one of the areas that we've turned to most quickly is, is in and around productivity and efficiency.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Thank you for your question, Lord Booth. This is really an important question, and it's the one thing that I've been picking up because we're brilliant at innovating. There is no shortage of our brilliant science, our researchers, our SMEs or start ups having that innovation. But it's the scaling of pilots, and it's the adoption within the NHS that we are clearly struggling. So what are we doing nationally?Well, we're putting in place the infrastructure so that the NHS can identify.

It, can assess and adopt proven innovation faster. Um we, you know, we already understand the barriers. I'm sure you understand. I'm not going to go through them. Um the life sciences sector plan is a year on. Um and this is the year for delivery. It is an absolutely ambitious part of the industrial strategy. It's an area of growth health and tech. It's certainly an area that the government takes very, very seriously.

Nobody wants to see a product just be in a pilot because if it improves outcomes, if it reduces pressure on staff, if it saves money across the pathway, then systems do have to recognise that value. And I think, you know, there is an ad hoc approach in different parts of the country wherever you go. And that's why, you know, the the department has, uh, published the value based procurement guidance. Um, and that's just simply the whole purpose of that guidance is about moving away from what does something cost?Because I think we do get caught up in cost as per recognising.

What value does it actually create for patients and the health system. And that's the question that I want us to answer. We're also creating much more clearer innovation pathways. I have lots of medtech companies in my constituency, for example. Um, I know, you know, we get this question from SMEs about we've got this brilliant product, but I just can't get it into the NHS, you know, uh, and it's not quite streamlined in the way that medicines is. And the pathway is quite clear.

We don't have that for health tech. And that's definitely something that we are going to address. Um, and so I think the new rules based innovation pathway for medtech, including the National Health Tech Assessment programme, we're creating that. It's a much more clearer route. What's the aim it identify what works. It assesses it properly. So making sure that nice MHRA and you know it's gone through those processes. And then we want to support adoption at scale.

Um but it also means moving away from every trust, having to repeat the same assessment of the same technology. Because honestly, that has been a big issue and we don't want everybody doing that. So I think trusts are going to be really central to seeing this come into fruition. And then we've got 15 health innovation networks across the country. They work locally, regionally and nationally. And what do they do?Well, they identify and test and spread information.

That's their whole purpose. Um, they help organize organisations, understand, well, what, what is the problem that we're trying to solve?Whether there is evidence that the technology works because clinicians can be very skeptical, as you know, but also how do you implement it safely and how do we share learning?Look, I've been to some amazing hospitals in Royal Surrey and Chelsea and Westminster, and robotics is really exciting. And seeing a prostate cancer surgery. But I want clinicians to share that best practice so other parts of the country benefit from clinicians saying that this technology is really good, this improves pathway.

We've got to bring the investment into areas. And then just to sort of there is a lot we're doing, and that's why I'm taking a bit long to answer the question. But we've then got the NHS Innovation Accelerator, and that's helped scale more than 100 evidence based innovations already across England. So we've already got that. And those innovations have reached over 10 million patients with around three and a half sites using Nia innovations. And, uh, there's been about 243 million external funding that's been raised to really support that.

That shows that we can scale and that, you know, we now need to make that the norm. That's what I want to do. This is not the exception. This has got to be standard NHS, uh, business that we are looking at. Um, and then I would say there's another programme called NHS insights. Uh, what does that do?It brings 18 member organisations representing about 150, 5000 staff, with over 35 million patients to build skills and capability around innovation adoption.

There is no point just having the adoption. We've got to have the skill sets in those places so that they are able to adopt that innovation, but clearly be able to say whether it's working, whether it needs changing or reviewing. Um, and that includes hospitals in places like Birmingham, in Bradford, Leeds, Essex, Newcastle and Milton Keynes. Um, a good case study I want to give you about AI reducing missed appointments is in Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust. They've got an AI solution to reduce missed appointments and improve waiting times.

So deep medical AI was integrated into patient communication system and it analysed patient data to offer alternative bookings. And that contributed to nearly a one third reduction in missed appointments. And NHS England is now planning further expansion across many more trusts. So that journey from evidence, adoption and scale is not something we just want in one hospital. We want that learning to be that adoption and that scaling of pilots to be much more uniform across the NHS trust. I'll probably stop there.

In case you've got any further follow ups.
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None Portrait Speaker 8
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How to solve it.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Yeah, no, that's a really important point. And so let me just be clear. There is the AI diagnostic fund. Uh, this is just one example of a funding pot that is available. And there are I appreciate there are a number because the life sciences sector plan sits across de CIT and DHS. Um, but the fund has been deployed across imaging networks at the moment, covering about 66 acute and specialist trusts. And some of this is about supporting what I talked about, the innovation around faster lung cancer diagnosis.

So there's already more than about 3.2 million chest X-rays and about 8000 CT scans that have been processed through using some of these tools. And the evidence, as I've said earlier, shows that AI can help individuals, can help radiologists analyse scans in around four days, compared with six days previously, and the most complex cases, um, helping patients get the answers much sooner around their diagnosis. And because of that progress, we recently announced a further 20 million to expand the AI chest X-ray tool so that every NHS trust in England by 2029 will absolutely have it adopted.

That's taking what works, what's proven, and then showing that actually we can roll it out and scale it up so that every patient, no matter where you are in the country, you should absolutely benefit from that. We're also investing 8.1 million through Nir, which is part of my department, the National Institute for research. Uh, and what we're doing there is we're testing six more AI and digital technologies across the NHS site. So this shows you what we're doing nationally. We're taking innovation.

We're, we're, we're now doing this pilot on further. Six further AI technologies. And these technologies will support the NHS staff. So what are we looking at the moment?We're looking at analyzed CT scans, EKGs and X-rays. And we're also looking at digital therapies. Uh, and what we're doing is identifying the most urgent patients for prioritisation as part of this pilot. And if this then works, then as we've done with the chest X-ray, it is about how do we then scale that and make sure that that adoption and innovation benefits patients across the country?So, so the, the focus, of course, has got to be because there's so much innovation and there's so many different areas at the moment, the focus is on heart failure, stroke, lung cancer, lung infections.

Um, and, uh, tic disorders. I think, um, where we know in these areas, faster treatment actually saves lives. And that's why we've got to do this prioritisation. That's why we've got to do this national rollout. So I want to assure you there is funding commitments there that takes that innovation, that looks at the safety of it and the adoption of that much more broadly.
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None Portrait Speaker 3
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I think I mean this is a recognised challenge and we embrace it fully. I think it is widely recognised that we have not leveraged the value that the NHS can command as a national procurement approach. Now, what that doesn't mean is that we buy it all centrally. Clearly, the local decision maker holds much of the actual accountability for the finance. However, what we are starting to look at now, and we do this in medicines already, and I think we can learn as to how we approach this towards healthtech and medtech in particular.

Interestingly, robotics is one of the areas we will leverage this in because you can imagine if you are at a trust level, procurement, buying one robot, the ability to negotiate the best value is very difficult because you're buying one. If we can start to leverage an at scale value procurement as we do in medicines already, we set one national price to actually enable the choice still to be local. The decision for the clinician to make, we recognise that we can then do much more of a value based procurement focused more on outcomes and leveraging the at scale procurement that the NHS, I think should and can realise.

But actually what that means is we have frameworks where we set a more national approach to that. That is work in progress. We are iterating. So we've currently started on some of the less high tech innovations, um to look at how we help choice as well so that we actually really focus on what best value looks like, not just about price, but actually the outcome it generates. And actually how we can embrace that at scale and pace.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Ernest Willis.
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None Portrait Speaker 9
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Stop you there.
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None Portrait Speaker 6
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Okay.
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None Portrait Speaker 10
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So can I just go through the other two categories?So so the other two categories are. Well, the next one is where something is locally innovated. And then we look at it and we go, that has national worth, and then we move into a support role where we actually probably take the technology, work with the local area, and then look to propagate it. The announcement at the weekend around AI triage and the NHS app is a perfect example of that. So that was a piece of technology procured by a GP, a GP.

I think there was a group of GPS in the Sussex area, uh, covering 20. 3000 patients. Uh, we supported them in running a trial to see whether that AI triage was effective for them. Uh, and it turns out that, uh, the, as a result of introducing it, the queue, the amount of people in the queue on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday morning trying to get a GP appointment dropped by 30% because people, because the triage activity was doing the job necessary to direct them to the right care pathway, whether that was self-care.

Go to a pharmacy, have a GP appointment or go to A&E. We're now working with them about taking that technology, embedding it in the NHS app, which is obviously used by 41 million people, and then working that through to for a national propagation. The next step for us is to do that in London with about 200 000 people. We'll get a larger base of evidence to suggest suggesting the extent of the benefits, and then we'll move into a national rollout, which we anticipate in April 28th.

That's a two year cycle to go from a local innovation where it was done discretely at grassroots level to a national propagation, and that is significantly quicker than the 9 to 16 years that I think I mentioned earlier in the in the discussion. So that's the second category. The third category is where we are asking local areas to innovate and helping them with the structures and technology to be able to do that, like getting the baseline tech in place to be able to support them. The a v t announcement, which was also part of the weekend, is an excellent example of that.

Whereas I'm saying giving them guidelines and saying use a V, T's are integrated into your electronic patient record systems because that's the best way of getting the data in. I am giving them latitude to be able to go and select who they want to trade with, who they want to buy from, and implement it locally. So we've got three different structures that we're bringing to life now, and I think that solves some of the issues that Lord Willis mentioned earlier about how do we avoid a future where people just do pilots and then nothing happens?It's because we are being assertive about innovating.

It is because we're putting structures in place to help it.
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None Portrait Speaker 10
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Sorry. Say that.
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None Portrait Speaker 10
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So I mean, the three that are active at the moment really. So there is a. There is an unmet need specifically to be able to see more patients more effectively, which is fundamentally the a v t element of it. There is, uh, there is the example that minister gave earlier about the introduction of AI to support radiologists in being able to make assessments about X-rays and CT scans, which was rolled out to, I think, 66 of the of the acute trusts. And we're now looking to roll that out further.

That's a that's a decision support tool fundamentally, that's using AI to identify issues within the scans. And then I think the third one is a is a different kind of one, which was mentioned again, FDP earlier, which was around using AI and machine learning to help in the optimization of the running of the system. So they are primarily they are primarily focused at the moment around what I would call operational performance or decision support. And I think this is a really important point. My my observation, having come into the health system again fairly recently from from other departments is that.

We seem to be worried that we're taking decision making away from clinical people, but I've seen no evidence of that in the in the use of AI and digital. If anything, we're trying to basically use that technology as a support tool and a decision assistance tool, rather than a decision making tool in its own. Right. And I think that's a really that's a really, for me, that is the right side of the line to be on.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Well, it shouldn't affect this process because this is a clear commitment. In the ten year health plan, the life sciences sector plan, uh, rollout has also got this. And, you know, as part of the government's industrial strategy. Life sciences is an important part of that. And all the work that we're doing is about not sort of stopping and starting or changing course, because you can't do that with this big transformation project projects. Um, the work of NHS and what's going to happen is ongoing.

And that's for the permanent secretary. Uh, piece of work that she's undertaking. Um, but I can assure you, given that this is in my brief, um, that we, I want us to accelerate and go at pace because I hear your concerns around that innovation and adoption not getting into the NHS. We have a unique, uh, we're in a unique position here in the United Kingdom in that we have the NHS where, you know, absolutely innovation should be adopted. I'm amazing. I've learnt in the brief just the phenomenal work that in science and research that we are doing and why the UK is the best place to come and not just discover, but to scale, adopt, manufacture the whole of it.

Um, whether it's medicines or whether it's med tech, health tech, um, but you know, I do, I do accept that there is lots of areas where there will be unmet needs. And in the end, we've got to look at the areas where mortality is highest as well and prioritise whether that's hot heart disease, as I said earlier, um these sort of areas, but it's about that whole journey. How do you support clinicians to do their jobs much better. How do we increase productivity?None of us want to see a patient that gets thrown in the FTP.

The reason it's important is people have sat on a waiting list, which is stuck in a drawer on a, you know, somebody's going through it now. Actually, what the AI can help you do is prioritise the patient whose symptoms or clear concerns are really serious so that they know that even though they've been sat on a referral, that that referral is going to get bumped up because they need treatment right now. And so, yes, if I can assure you, I am excited about this brief. Um, and I want us to be rolling out much more innovation across the country as we can.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Yeah, I mean, look, you know, if we want to lead on personalised medicine, if we want to lead on AI, then access to high quality data is really essential because you just cannot do that. Uh, so Hdrs is going to help researchers generate the evidence that they need to understand, you know, do new treatments work?Our technologies safe. And how can we get sort of proven innovation to patients much more quickly?Hdrs is going to build on our existing strengths already. So that's the genomic data that we've got.

It's the diagnostic data we have. We've got lab data. Um, and we've got lots of other health research assets. Um, so that that primarily is going to create the foundation. The Hdrs is now incorporated. Um, so this is going to be a real integral year, uh, in terms of, you know, getting things moving. But, but I also have to consider in my role, public trust and the safeguards around HDR Hdrs. Yes, this is an AI national body of data.

Um, but rightfully so many of you and many of our constituents will be wanting to know, well, what, how is that data going to be used?And is it going to be, uh, safe?So, so like the public trust issue is the thing that's on my mind quite a lot. Um, but inevitably patients do want their data to be used to improve outcomes and they want it for everybody. And so I think when we explain to people how that data is used and what the safeguards are, actually the British public is pretty much, uh, on, on our side because they can see, uh, what it means for, uh, future outcomes.

So, um, you know, that we have a chair, which is Melanie. Sorry, she's the CEO and Baroness Blackwood is the chair of the Hdrs.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Do you want.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Ernest Jones.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Thank you chair.
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None Portrait Speaker 10
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You're just going to.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Yeah. No, it's a really important point. It comes back to the point of the adoption per se across a number of issues. Um, in the NHS. I mean the MHRA has done some really good work. I have to say it's a regulator that lots of people around the world really do respect. I think Lawrence Tallon has done a lot of really good work and um, some of the things that they're really helping, especially support confidence in terms of innovation is the MHRA have got the AI airlock.

What does that do?Well, it allows innovative AI products to be tested in controlled environments. So you know, it it's bringing together the regulator the clinicians, uh, the industry and technical experts so that healthcare settings can absolutely have confidence, um, that the AI performs safely in real world settings because that is the concern of a lot of the adoption barriers. And then the MHRA has also established the National commission into the regulation of AI in healthcare. Um, again, this is about bringing together NHS organisations, technical experts, um, and they are trying to feed in, in terms of what does that future regulatory framework actually look like?And those are the kind of conversations we need to have because we know, as Rob said, you know, this is a fast moving area and regulation has got to keep up to pace while we protect patients, because in the end, it is about patient safety too.

Right?So, um, and so I honestly, I take on board the point that you make because the adoption bit is a bit that we absolutely have got to get right.
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None Portrait Speaker 12
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So timescale on this.
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None Portrait Speaker 14
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Has interest rumor.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Thank you so much.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Yeah.
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None Portrait Speaker 10
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So I'll pick that up. So, um. So Lawrence has commissioned this work, uh, himself, uh, which I think is a really good thing. And it's, it's, it's needed. I understand that the review and the report is likely to come out in September. That is the that's the last time I heard that he was going to formalise what they'd found. They have been good in, uh, outlining what they're finding in an interim basis, but I. Think there, I think there's kind of like three things that, that come from there.

The first one is that. They're not just only considering the risk of introducing AI, they're also looking at the risk of not introducing it and the negative impacts that have on patients. I think that's a really profound shift because ultimately it's looking at the counterfactual, isn't it?And just saying, actually, if we don't do this, how much harm continues potentially. So. And I think that's a very that's a very bold and ambitious thing for Lawrence to do. And I think it's actually very badly needed, given the pace of change in this in arena.

Um. I'm in. With Lawrence and, uh, the, the interim findings that we need to move away from the point in time approval and accreditation process and find a way of continuously improving AI's that are deployed, recognising that they will in themselves evolve and get better. And I think I think Lawrence's current view of this is to frame the frame, the nature of how much an AI can evolve without it having a full review. And I think we're going to have to do we're going to have to learn by doing on that, because I think that's going to be an experiential thing.

And then, uh.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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Workforce.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Yeah, I think this is a really important point because, you know, clinical academics, as you say, are vital to the UK health research. I'm very privileged that I represent a constituency which has the largest hospital trust in the country. Um, and it sits next to the University of Birmingham. And then you've got the Health Innovation campus, and it's a training and research, um, hospital trust. Um, but, but that's not replicated everywhere and we don't have um the benefits of that, but the, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, as you rightly recommended.

Well, they are the largest funder of clinical academic training. And I think that is really important. Um, because, you know, they invest over 230 million every year in research training programmes. And it's to your point, it's about how do we retain, how do we support those clinicians that have both of those different skill sets?But there is going to be a new, uh, research workforce update because there is a recognition that across the country, the landscape is, uh, it varies. Um, and that will be published, I think in the, there isn't a fixed timeline, but I think in the coming months, in a couple of months, um, there is a view to bring that, bring that in, but there's also the NIH has an academy.

Um, so there are lots of different things at the NIH are doing. And what they're responsible for is, is the development and the coordination of some of the academic training. Um, that is going to be available, but also they do research capacity. They look at career development. Um, so, so, so there is a lot of work that is actually being done in this area. There is also money. So in the personalized medicine space, there's about 17.9 million to do this piece of research.
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None Portrait Speaker 16
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Grateful to you for giving us so much time, but I really want to concentrate on the specific issue of clinical academics, because I think they really are the leaders in this area. For example, so many major advances in the health service, a whole of, for example, um, care of neonatal neonates was completely changed by clinical academics. This applies to many areas of surgery where people are employing. And it's certainly one of the most interesting aspects of innovation has been in vitro fertilization in in vitro fertilization is a $35 billion.

Um. Now, industry, we get no money at all from that, even though in fact we in fact developed it. In fact, actually what has happened, partly because of regulation, which I think has been misapplied, it's been more and more difficult to get licenses and also more and more difficult to get the work in, in clinical medicine inside the NHS that's actually now ignored completely. And really that's completely inadequate. If we want innovation, we should encourage it because there's a huge amount of innovation to be done, for example, in things in in genetic medicine.

And one of the things we've heard again and again that the two greatest areas in the workforce that are really important, one is imaging, which of course includes what we've already talked about, which is radiology, and not only radiology, but mainly radiology. And the other, of course, is genomics. And, and, and, and, and obviously the use of, of, genetics generally. Now, it seems to me that those are two areas which are really being mostly pushed by these sorts of employees, but actually there just is not enough money in the current pot.

And they used to be other monies from research councils, which is no longer available, nor indeed from the Wellcome Trust. But it's it's really urgent. If we have some kind of recognition of that quite separately in the health service, in my view.
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None Portrait Speaker 16
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Arranger can I minister?
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None Portrait Speaker 11
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Sorry.
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None Portrait Speaker 11
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Minister, I want to congratulate you. It's in seven weeks. You seem to have really approached this brief with gusto, and your excitement is palpable. Um, and you've got a lot to deal with. We all know the NHS, um, the technology, the innovation, the bureaucracy, the organisations. My question is about the voice of the patient. We've had quite a broad ranging discussion today, but and even in the ten year strategy, where is the voice of the patient in terms of their experience?I say this as someone who spent the best part of 30 years delivering major public services using technology.

I'm not a techie and I'm not a commercial person. You have those people with you, but the voice of the patient, the user experience, the customer experience in this case, the patient experience will be fundamental to any success that we see happening in this area. And you mentioned the 41 million people using the NHS app. I've used it recently. My experience is not great from the app. And this comes you've mentioned comms a few times as well. If I was to say that my average fitness app with much less data gives me a much better experience and understanding of what's going on with me, then the NHS app does.

I think you know where I'm coming from. So where is the focus that you're going to have in all the things you're doing around the, what we call the UX, the, the, the patient experience, how that can be fed back in how they can feel that they have some control and understanding of what's coming. And actually, we talk about precision medicine. Isn't this about personal well-being and the language that we use to describe what's going to happen?
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Can I just say, Lord, thank you very much for your kind words. I have to say, I have probably one of the best briefs in across Whitehall. And it certainly, you know, health touches everybody's lives in some way. And, uh, it's a real privilege to do this brief. It's really exciting because I think the work that we're doing, especially in the data tech space, is revolutionary. It's going to change people's experience of the NHS and how they sort of navigate through, uh, getting various treatment pathways.

But the question you raise is really fundamental to everything that I do. My brief is Minister for Innovation and Patient Safety, and it's the patient safety from the constituency angle. As a member of Parliament that I come to every single question, what does this mean for the patients?How is it improving patient outcomes?Where is the voice of the patient in terms of the things we're doing?And that's why I think the communications piece is is vital. Now, having the national conversation about what patients, except you're absolutely right about the NHS app.

I think there are some really good things it does. If you can get a GP appointment. Brilliant. Uh, you can see your blood test, you can see your appointment letters, but there are lots of people that are excluded digitally as well. And so a recognition of rural areas where Wi-Fi is not always brilliant and the infrastructure is not there. How do we make sure that there, you know, those people are equally very much part of being able to have access to healthcare.

And it's interesting the health and wellbeing. I mean, I want to be ambitious and the NHS app has got to do a lot of things because it's integrating. It will be part of the single patient record. It will be part of the NHS online. It will be part of the hdrs. Um but we've got to take the country with us. Right. And we've got to be talking to groups. We've got to talk to you.

Uh, the Lord's really important. Lots of expertise and experience and how you, uh, you know, use the app versus, you know, what clinicians think, how easy is it actually to, for, for the app to sort of, uh, the interface of it, you know, you share about your Fitbits and things like that. You're absolutely right. I mean, what that can produce versus what should be on the NHS app, uh, is really, really important. So like, let me be clear, I'm absolutely ambitious.

I want the patient voice to be central to this. Um, you know, as, as, as do we. And that's why I think a consultation starting now, having that national conversation, engaging so many and young people as well, like, you know, there are so many people and we can learn from, I suppose the, uh, social media ban a piece of consultation and work that was done in Dorset, just how integral that was and how integral it is to bring people with us. Um, because we want to all of us want to see outcomes improve for patients.

Rob, can I bring you in?
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None Portrait Speaker 10
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Uh, last week.
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None Portrait Speaker 6
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Thanks, chair. This committee has looked not just in this inquiry, but in previous inquiries as to how the government supports domestic UK companies and including. Within their life sciences companies. And the evidence we've received is that the experience of UK companies is really negative. So much so that if a company sets its business strategy to focus on being a supplier to the NHS, the venture capital community does not want to invest in them. And we've seen evidence from from leading medtech, AI, life sciences companies that have had much more success in achieving a procurement wins outside of the UK.

Now, Minister, you've joined a department which has a track record of not buying British. Um if we take in the IT space. Mr. Thompson, you say how cloud um hyperscalers are world leading. They are world leading in the UK now because they so undercut the domestic industry 15 years ago that the UK companies could not compete. And we're now going through that again with AI. So minister, to the point of trust, an attitude survey in the UK just two weeks ago on AI showed that the British public want politicians who are in control of the way in which AI is deployed in their country that respects, um, the issues that are important to, to the general public.

And therefore, as patients. And they're very concerned from this survey as to the way in which the alignment between the US administration and the US big Tech has been used negatively. And we see how the government has recently adjusted the nice value for money thresholds as part of its pharma deal with the United States. What I'd like to hear from you, Mr.. Relatively new minister in the Department. Your enthusiasm otherwise for looking again at the way in which the NHS procures technology medicines across the piece to help favour domestic industry.

And what are you doing now?To basically change the environment?Such more aligns with what the British public want.
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