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Is technology killing the NHS?

I'm sorry if this comes across as pessimistic but I believe that the NHS will die unless seriously intelligent reforms are made to it. These reforms will probably not be possible because of inertia in the system. What happened to Stafford Hospital is a snapshot of what will come to other NHS trusts.

When the NHS was established in the 1940s, technology in hospitals was far simpler. In many cases medical procedures were carried out using simple hand tools. The most complicated piece of equipment in a hospital was probably an X-Ray machine. A modern hospital contains tens of thousands of pieces of advanced machinery.

This costs a large amount of money to buy.

This costs a large amount of money to maintain and service.

This costs a large amount of money to provide staff training.

The amount of money spent by hospitals on advanced medical devices and IT equipment keeps increasing year after year and is a substantial part of the NHS budget.

If this isn't bad enough in itself, the NHS is not very good when it comes to using and deploying technology due to its cumbersome and antiquated management structure along with the mentality of a high proportion of its staff. The NHS is clearly not a visionary and progressive organisation.

Only a small fraction of medical devices are specifically designed for the NHS. A high proportion of them are off the shelf products primarily designed for the US healthcare market.

The situation is marginally better with software although NHS IT projects are known to have been expensive disasters.

Therefore, is technology killing the NHS?

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0 Paul Gruszka over 5 years ago

The fundamental problem and what you are all eluding to is that the NHS doesn’t have a Research & development department so it is at the mercy of private companies that are all chasing profits. The worst being the drug companies that offer new drugs as new technology to prolong life on their drugs without site of a cure. If the electronics industry had the lack of progress that medicine has had over the last one hundred years we would still be using sparks to transmit radio signals and never have invented the valve let alone digital technology. Medicine is a closed shop with no mechanism for making progress and hence no mechanism for dealing with new technology. I posted a bit about Electrotherapy in the medical networking area here

communities.theiet.org/.../23737

that speaks volumes from the silence it received.

If you look at the history one can see medical progress has come from engineers whether it be mechanical engineers for the joints, heart valves or externals machines to assist the body, electrical engineers for the radio therapy and scanners or chemical engineers for drugs. We all know what happens to species that don’t make progress, they go extinct. It has to be down to government to create an R & D sections that goes in pursuit of cures not profits. Profit has no place in medicine since it ultimately puts the pursuit of money above the health of people. I know from my own investigations that any pathogen can be killed using Electrotherapy that includes the cure of cancers, HIV and Malaria. What could that do for the NHS budget in terms of emptying beds and eliminating the drugs bill for long term treatments?
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0 Paul Gruszka over 5 years ago

The fundamental problem and what you are all eluding to is that the NHS doesn’t have a Research & development department so it is at the mercy of private companies that are all chasing profits. The worst being the drug companies that offer new drugs as new technology to prolong life on their drugs without site of a cure. If the electronics industry had the lack of progress that medicine has had over the last one hundred years we would still be using sparks to transmit radio signals and never have invented the valve let alone digital technology. Medicine is a closed shop with no mechanism for making progress and hence no mechanism for dealing with new technology. I posted a bit about Electrotherapy in the medical networking area here

communities.theiet.org/.../23737

that speaks volumes from the silence it received.

If you look at the history one can see medical progress has come from engineers whether it be mechanical engineers for the joints, heart valves or externals machines to assist the body, electrical engineers for the radio therapy and scanners or chemical engineers for drugs. We all know what happens to species that don’t make progress, they go extinct. It has to be down to government to create an R & D sections that goes in pursuit of cures not profits. Profit has no place in medicine since it ultimately puts the pursuit of money above the health of people. I know from my own investigations that any pathogen can be killed using Electrotherapy that includes the cure of cancers, HIV and Malaria. What could that do for the NHS budget in terms of emptying beds and eliminating the drugs bill for long term treatments?
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Is technology killing the NHS?

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