UK health secretary Wes Streeting has said the use of robotics will be at the heart of the governmentโs 10-year plan for the NHS and the drive to improve productivity.
Robot-assisted surgeries will become standard for certain procedures, such as ear, nose and throat operations, and hospitals that fail to use this technology will be paid less, he told the Financial Times a week before his blueprint for reviving the NHS is published.ย
โThe thing that gives me the most excitement about what the NHS could be is the revolution in medical technology,โ including the expansion of โpioneering roboticsโ, Streeting said.ย
โWe want to make sure weโve got more use of robotic surgery so that in 10 yearsโ time, one in eight operations are done by a robot,โ he said. Currently, about one in 60 elective surgical procedures are robot assisted.
Officials said the expansion of robotics was expected in general surgery, urology, gynaecology, trauma and orthopaedics, as well as in cardiothoracic, ear, nose and throat procedures.
The use of robotic surgery will not only increase the number of treatments, but will speed up recovery times because it is less invasive, with patients spending less time in overstretched hospitals.
The 10-year plan will also set out proposals to expand the use of robotics in NHS pharmacies to dispense prescriptions, as well as accelerating the use of robotic process automation, which could see robots handling data entry and medical stocks.
Streeting said the plan will increase the number of โbest practice tariffsโ from next year, under which hospitals will be financially penalised for sticking to outdated surgical practices.
โSo you close down the space for the laggards to just hang back and waste taxpayersโ money,โ Streeting said.
โWe recognise that it takes time and money, but over time itโs just not acceptable that some hospitals will be delivering better care at better value for money, while others are delivering poorer care at worse value.โ
The cabinet minister, whose own kidney cancer was in part treated by a robot, said the increase in productivity and efficiency that could be achieved using such technology would be vital in proving the NHS can remain a viable public service.
The model of a publicly funded, free at the point of use service, was in โreal jeopardyโ, he said. โIf we donโt make the NHS sustainable, it will go bust.โ
Referring to the importance of his 10-year plan for fixing the โbrokenโ NHS, he said โeveryone knows how existential this isโ.
Improving NHS performance is one of the key ways his government expects to be held accountable by the public at the next election.
Streetingโs governing Labour party is currently polling behind Nigel Farageโs Reform UK, which has suggested a shift away from the current tax funded model towards an insurance-based system.
Health leaders have questioned whether it would be possible for all NHS hospitals to increase the use of robotics, given capital funding from the Treasury will remain flat for the next three years.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation and a former Labour party strategist, said: โFor NHS organisations to reach a point where they can make significant productivity jumps by using robots they will need upfront central investment in this type of technology, which does not come cheap.
โIf those hospital trusts that have not already invested in this advanced technology arenโt allocated the capital funding they need to buy it, they simultaneously risk falling further behind in making inroads into their elective waiting lists while also being paid less for the work they do.โ
As well as robotics, the 10-year plan will propose greater use of ambient voice technology (AVT) โ AI-powered products that aim to make it quicker for doctors to take medical notes, auto-generating transcripts of patient visits, highlighting relevant details and creating clinical summaries.
Streeting said this technology alone can boost productivity among doctors by up to 20 per cent.
However, the rise in tech-assisted medical note-taking has spurred concern about the risk of AI-generated fabrications, known as โhallucinationsโ, as well as the issue of patient data privacy.
This month the national chief clinical information officer of the NHS wrote to staff to warn that there were a number of AVT systems being โwidely usedโ in clinical practice that do not comply with NHS governance standards.
โWeโve got to make sure that there is a widespread awareness among clinicians of the importance [of] using approved, tried and tested products and software,โ Streeting said. โI take this security issue really seriously, and peopleโs data security seriously.
โWhat is not legitimate is using software or products that are not licensed and authorised for use. So certainly with NHS leaders we will be cascading that message down through the system through to the front line.โ
He said NHS staff should know โtheyโve got a government that shares their appetite for using ambient AI and weโre going to give them the tools to the jobโ.
Streeting said the 10-year plan will be followed by a series of further announcements, including a new workforce plan in the autumn.
โWeโve ditched the previous governmentโs workforce plan because it was written before ChatGPT became widely used and itโs already out of date,โ he said.
โInstead of asking โhow many staff do we need to maintain our current care model over the next 10 years?โ, it will ask โgiven our reform plan, what workforce do we need, what should they do, where should they be deployed and what skills do they need?โโ
