Monitor has now released the output from the NHS Futures summit held on 21 November 2013, hosted by NHS England, Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority. The summit was designed to spark debate about how the landscape of health and care providers could evolve over the next decade to better meet the challenges outlined in the Call to Action. Over 100 senior health leaders took part including commissioners, providers (including GPs), health policy experts, and patient and charity representatives.

The summary Call to Action document makes encouraging reading for those who believe technology can help the NHS to improve patient outcomes at lower cost.  Contrary to the consultation exercise held by NHS England last August when we pointed out that remote consultation was not even mentioned, this features prominently in the Monitor summary (see especially Appendix 3, on pages 19-21), together with many other uses of technology such as smart homes, encouraging self-care, telemedicine, single patient record, interoperability, etc.

There are also some great videos – in particular (more…)