NHS must keep innovating and be truly tech-driven, says Hancock

The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in the NHS, according to the Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, former secretary of state for health.

As technology is creating a catalyst for change by making the NHS open to new ways of working and providing patient care, in his keynote address at the REC’s conference on 30 June, Hancock said: “What we saw in the pandemic was a necessity for change, accompanied by a very strong shared vision.”

He went on to say: “If you think of any large organisation, a combination of willingness to accept and seek positive changes with a mission that everybody shares is normally a recipe for very strong performance.”

In the first plenary session of the day, ‘The Future of Health, post-pandemic’, Hancock said the NHS, the biggest employer in the UK, needs to keep innovating and adapting to change to become a modern organisation. It must be a truly tech-driven ‘business’, rather than a tech-phobic organisation, he said. 

To achieve it, the workforce must be willing to work differently. “So often in tech transformation, it’s the people rather than the technology that’s the hard part,” said Hancock. “It’s standard in tech transformation to talk about how technology is 10% of the solution and changing working practices and getting people to embrace the technology is 90%.”

To get the workforce on board with the tech-driven approach, the NHS realised that every employee had to know what their data responsibilities were and the implications for them professionally. So, it rewrote the data rules, taking what was several hundred pages of documentation and turning it into one side of A4. This meant that the data rules around areas such as security were accessible to everyone.

As part of the NHS’s ongoing modernisation programme, Hancock says it needs to improve organisational culture and make it a more attractive place to work. Implementing more up-to-date, flexible working practices is key to achieving that. “Every other set of employers in the country has a way of ensuring that there is cover,” said Hancock. 

If the NHS enabled employees to work more flexibly, Hancock believes the NHS could run a more efficient service as well as benefit its workforce.

The former health secretary also discussed his dyslexia during his talk at the REC event.

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