BIVDA have submitted our response to the Government’s NHS 10-year plan consultation.
We highlighted how diagnostics are a key driver to achieving the NHS’s three shifts and to support the NHS as a health economic agency. With an ageing population and many economically inactive due to preventable long- term conditions, proactive diagnosis enables precision treatment and informed lifestyle change, enabling people to return to or remain in the workforce.
The 10-year plan must enable the right test, to be used at the right time, in the right place. Policy recommendations included: removing barriers to adoption; acknowledging the downstream savings enabled by diagnostics; providing multi-year fundings streams; creating a less cluttered diagnostics policy landscape; ensuring sustainability requirements are globally proportionate; implementing the 2016 Lord O’Neill Review on AMR; and pivoting towards more home-testing.
The health service faces significant challenges, and delivering the right reforms will not be easy. However, the shifts outlined by Government are sound and if delivered with ambition and without inertia, the NHS can be the truly 21st-century health service that patients deserve.
We would like to thank members who provided their input which helped to inform our response.
