Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support the adoption of new (a) treatments and (b) innovations for respiratory conditions across NHS services in Surrey.

Improving respiratory care for both adults and children remains a priority, and this forms part of the Surrey and Sussex Integrated Care Boards’s CORE20Plus5 ambitions for both adults, for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and children and young people, for asthma.

Recent areas of focus have included implementing new asthma prescribing guidelines and providing resources to primary care colleagues to support regular reviews in relation to prescribing, which supports reducing admissions and the delivery of respiratory care.

Work is also underway, as part of developing the Surrey Joint Strategic Needs Analysis, in relation to priority populations and key neighbourhoods, including people living in close proximity to Heathrow and Gatwick airports, as well as the M25, where there tends to be higher levels of respiratory illness.

In addition, considering wider risk factors, the integrated care board is working closely with public health to ensure smoking cessation support is available to everyone in Surrey, including those with respiratory conditions. Other related initiatives include joint work with partners to improve aspects of asthma care and recently launching the lung cancer screening programme in Surrey to support earlier detection.