Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to encourage technology innovation in the NHS.

There are many programmes of work underway supported by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care across Government to encourage technology innovation in the National Health Service. We have provided over £100 million in funding to support the development and adoption of health tech innovations across the NHS. In October 2018 the Department published ‘The future of healthcare: our vision for digital, data and technology in health and care’ which outlined what is needed to enable the health and care system to make the best use of technology to support preventative, predictive and personalised care. There is also ongoing work to encourage adoption of data-driven technology with the latest iteration of the Code of Conduct for data-driven technology published in February 2019. We have also announced the creation of NHSX, a joint unit which from July will mandate the use of internationally-recognised tech and data standards across the NHS.