The Government has announced a funding injection of nearly £250 million pounds into the modernisation of diagnostic technology in the NHS. The overall goal of the investment is to support the NHS’s ongoing push to drive down care backlog figures, and ensure that diagnostic screenings are at the necessary level to detect undiagnosed diseases within the UK population. The improved technology will lead to better efficiency by saving staff time, and improved data will allow hospital labs to share patient results, tests and scans easier and quicker.
Nurses, doctors and other clinicians stand to benefit from a boost in diagnostic services, especially through digitalisation. Those care for a patients can access patient tests results in a more efficient manner, even if they work in different settings across the health service. According to the Government, this new technology will allow imaging specialists “to review high-res images remotely without needing to be in an imaging lab, 24 hours a day”.
The funding has been announced following a set of recommendations from Professor Sir Mike Richards’ independent review of NHS diagnostics capacity, which showed that an improvement in digitalisation must be prioritised to deliver seamless care. £2.3 billion in funding was announced at the latest Spending Review to transform diagnostic services over the next three years, with at least 100 community diagnostic centres being put into operation.
