Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the NHS Long Term Plan, what steps his Department is taking to improve the rate of adoption of ready for speed health technology products.

The NHS Long Term Plan and the second Life Sciences Sector Deal set out the Government and National Health Service commitment to ensuring that patients are able to receive the best treatments as fast as possible.

From 2020, a new NHS England health tech funding requirement will identify the best value innovations as ‘ready to spread’ and help the NHS to adopt them quickly. This will apply to health tech products which have been assessed as cost saving by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). In addition, NICE will significantly increase the number of evaluations it does for health tech products, so that the NHS has the evidence it needs to decide the best products to adopt and spread.

Improving the adoption and spread of high quality innovations is also a priority for the Accelerated Access Collaborative under the leadership of Lord Darzi. In October, they identified 12 products that should be supported for rapid spread across the NHS, and further products will be identified this year. The Academic Health Science Networks are also a key partner in supporting the adoption and spread of health tech across the system, and the NHS Long Term Plan commits to their continued role in improving access to innovation.