NHS must change with the times & embrace technology if it is to survive
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HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting puts NHS reform in a nutshell. Unless the health service urgently ups its game, it will stagnate like Woolworths, another much-loved national institution that disastrously failed to change with the times. To survive, the health service needs the business savvy and modern thinking of the most successful 21st Century firms.
![[Unless the health service urgently ups its game, it will stagnate]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2330-thursday-february-1-file-876000488.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Thirty million of us have the NHS app on our phones. So why isn’t it being effectively used to slash the 7.6million case backlog?. It is madness that millions of patients still wait for a snail mail appointment letter, only to miss it and have to wait for another to be sent, costing the NHS a fortune.
Giving patients more choice on where and when to get treatment then updating them with results on the same phone app seems a step in the right direction. Even better if this saves the NHS billions of pounds and massively boosts efficiency. But even improved technology may not suit many older patients and it must not become an excuse to avoid rooting out deeply ingrained waste elsewhere.
To work effectively, this app needs to be radically overhauled so it is streamlined and effective, with first-class back-up. It must also guarantee effective cyber-security measures to keep ahead of the ever-growing threat posed by hackers who target patients’ private details.
