The Government’s ambition for digital transformation across the NHS can only succeed if Ministers address the mistakes of the past. This is according to a new report from the Health and Social Care Committee.
One of the barriers to digital transformation is a lack of digitally-skilled staff. The report acknowledges that attracting enough skilled digital specialists into the healthcare workforce has long been a challenge – as it has across the civil service – largely because such professionals can earn significantly more in the private sector. It is therefore recommended that the Government allows NHS England to move away from Agenda for Change pay scales when recruiting Data, Digital and Technology specialists, to ensure it can recruit and retain the people that it needs.
Outdated, ‘legacy’ IT systems and hardware that are not capable of handling the demands of a modern digital health service and are often not interoperable are a further problem. The report claims that parts of the health service still lack even the most basic, functioning IT equipment. The Government recognises that ‘levelling up’ NHS organisations’ digital capacity to a minimum standard is necessary if digital transformation is to proceed across the board.
Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, Steve Brine MP, says: “We find reason for optimism in the government’s approach to the digital transformation of the NHS. We know that the NHS app was hugely successful during the pandemic and the government has big plans for it to do more to bring real benefits to patients.
“However, there are major challenges to overcome. On a visit to the US, we saw digital patient records being used seamlessly in hospitals. Here, it can take more than 15 minutes for a clinician to turn on a PC because kit is outdated. The lack of skilled digital professionals is a further barrier. Until the NHS can offer higher salaries to compete with the private sector, it won’t be able to attract the people to deliver the transformation that’s needed to run a modern health service.
“The long-term sustainability of the health service depends on getting this right but there will be people who decide that digital services are not for them, and we are clear that they should not find themselves excluded by future developments.”
