Is it a brilliant initiative to raise funds for the NHS and spur innovation in patient care, or a worrying sign of the heath service undergoing privatisation by stealth?
That is the debate stirred by a licensing deal with a UK start-up that will see the NHS receive a share of royalties from the commercialisation of inventions in medical care.Oxford University and the teaching hospital of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will receive £5m of equity in Drayson Technologies under a five-year strategic research agreement.
The company, founded in 2015 by Paul Drayson, a former Labour Government science minister, focuses on wireless charging technology and machine learning software to create smart sensor networks. The deal will give Drayson Technologies the possibility of licensing intellectual property developed by Professor Lionel Tarassenko, the head of the university’s department of engineering science.
His research group has already worked in partnership with the NHS Trust to develop digital health products that allow people to use internet resources and monitoring devices to better track and manage their health and chronic diseases. The deal means that if future products are commercially successful the NHS will receive a financial return. The inventions will be created by people working within the NHS to improve the level of care within the NHS.
Private firms have always contributed to the NHS in one way or another. Some services in particular, such as dentistry, optical care and pharmacy, have long been provided by the private sector but critics claim that its increasing involvement could undermine the NHS’s core values.
A report from the Health Departments published accounts for 2015-16 showed an annual increase of 0.3 percent in the share of NHS spending that went to the private sector. It rose from 7.3 per cent of the budget in 2014-15 to 7.6 per cent, or around £8.7 billion, the following year. The extent of private sector involvement varies substantially between different areas of care. A report from the Nuffield Trust for example suggested that private spending between 2010-11 and 2012-13 increased more quickly in community services and mental health than in other services.
Some hospitals have also recently increased the outsourcing of some services to tackle excessive waiting time for patients. The NHS Quarterly Performance of the Provider Sector report showed at the end of 2016 that the cost of outsourcing in the provider sector was set to rise from £241m in 2015-16 to £402m in 2016-17.
But the tendency of the NHS to turn to private funding is nothing new. The Blair and Brown governments appealed to private providers to increase patient choice and competition. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 was another significant step in introducing market forces to the NHS. It extended market-based approaches, strengthening competition and patient choice as ways of improving health care.
As a result many contracts were awarded to private providers. Among the more controversial deals, a £1.2b contract in Staffordshire to deliver end-of-life and cancer care was widely criticised. After a prolonged delay, the cancer element of the contract, worth a potential £687m, was dropped but the end-of-life care component of the contract is continuing as planned.
The independent Naylor Review was published in March with recommendations on how the NHS funding could be helped by selling redundant land and buildings that are expensive to maintain. The sell-off proposals were seen by anti-privatisation activists as part of a Tory Government plan to shrink the health service and hand funds to the private sector, through both land sales and changes designed to improve efficiency.
Many other health experts said the proceeds from selling the NHS’s estimated £2b to £5b worth of unused land would help secure its long-term future and free up substantial space for new housing.
by Alessandro Mascellino
The post NHS Innovation: Great idea or sell-out? appeared first on Felix Magazine.
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