Professor Terry Young, Professor of Healthcare Systems in Brunel University London's Department of Computer Science, argues that the NHS should drop service improvement and just design services properly.
In his comment piece for the National Health Executive magazine, Professor Young drew together the strands from various clinical and academic leaders who have provided reflective blog posts for the Cumberland Initiative, of which Professor Young is a founder.
The Cumberland Initiative is a movement to encourage simulation and modelling of healthcare scenarios to improve NHS quality of care delivery. It brings together expertise from several universities, with Brunel as coordinating partner, and a growing collection of affiliated companies.
Although the blog posts were never intended as a systematic analysis, together they provide a surprisingly coherent commentary on the service provision challenge that faces the NHS and why it is struggling to rise to it this time.
Commenting on these perspectives, Professor Young said: "They call into question the current approach of trying steadily to improve services. Not only do the services frequently fail to deliver what is required, but the mechanisms for guaranteeing quality are themselves suspect.
"Meanwhile the rest of the world looks at things the other way around – deciding what it needs and setting out to achieve it."
Read the full article on NationalHealthExecutive.com; for further detail, explore the Cumberland Initiative blog and its YouTube videos.
Reported by:
Joe Buchanunn,
Media Relations
joe.buchanunn@brunel.ac.uk