Over £3 million to transform technology in adult social care
- People who receive care will benefit from new technology to help improve their independence and reduce avoidable hospital admissions, the government has announced.
- Four new projects have received over £3 million through the government’s Adult Social Care Technology Fund to transform the use of digital technology in adult social care.
- The funding will help identify care-focused technology solutions that have the potential for wider rollout within the sector, and in doing so provide evidence to prioritise investments in care technology.
The Monthly Diagnostics data for August 2023 can be found here.
- The total number of patients waiting six weeks or more from referral for one of the 15 key diagnostic tests at the end of August 2023 was 429,400. This was 27.5% of the total number of patients waiting at the end of the month.
- Nationally, the operational standard of less than 1% of patients waiting six weeks or more was not met this month.
- Compared with August 2022 the total number of patients waiting six weeks or more decreased by 37,100 while the proportion of patients waiting six weeks or more decreased by 3.1 percentage points.
- In the last 12 months, the proportion of patients waiting six weeks or more at the end of a month has varied between 25.0% (March 2023) and 31.3% (December 2022).
- The estimated average time that a patient had been waiting for a diagnostic test was 3.4 weeks at the end of August 2023.
- There were 1,563,400 patients waiting for a key diagnostic test at the end of August 2023. This is an increase of 34,900 from August 2022.
- A total of 2,218,600 diagnostic tests were undertaken in August 2023. This is an increase of 182,100 from August 2022.
- Providing further evidence at the public Covid inquiry this week, the chair of the BMA Professor Phil Banfield warned that inadequate PPE, poor testing infrastructure and inadequate public safety measures contributed to the Government ‘losing control’ of the pandemic.
- Detailing the impact of the lack of availability of PCR tests, Professor Banfield said this had a significant impact on staff shortages on the front line with people having to isolate for 14 days who may not have been positive. He also warned that one of the consequences of a lack of PCR tests was that “the chance of passing covid around a hospital was very high.”
- The chair of the BMA detailed how the Government’s decision to abandon contact tracing without having other necessary public health measures in place meant that the virus was much more likely to spread and contribute to pressure on the health service.
- UK patients, the healthcare system and the life sciences sector are set to benefit from a new scheme that will see the time taken by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to approve the lowest-risk clinical trials reduced by more than 50%.
- The scheme is based on that outlined in the MHRA’s clinical trials consultation which was endorsed by 74% of those who responded. It forms a significant part of the regulator’s overhaul of the clinical trials regulation, supporting the government’s ambition for the UK to be one of the best countries in the world to conduct clinical research for patients and researchers.
- Initial applications for the lowest-risk Phase 3 and 4 trials will be processed by the MHRA within 14 days instead of the statutory 30 days, provided the sponsor can demonstrate the trial meets the MHRA’s criteria, including by confirming there are no known safety issues with the medicine being investigated.
