HealthTech leader Cera calls on Government to create
AI taskforce for health and social care

TUESDAY 6 AUGUST 2024, LONDON, UK: One of the UK's largest social care providers, Cera, has called on the new Government to create a Responsible AI Taskforce for Health and Social Care.

Cera's Founder Dr Ben Maruthappu today urged the Government to bring together tech pioneers with health and social care chiefs and other experts to form the taskforce, entrusting them with harnessing the power of AI and preventative tech to drive much-needed reform across the sectors. 

Cera's call for the taskforce is one of five tangible, low-cost recommendations it is urging the new Government to prioritise during its first 100 days in power.

Dr Maruthappu, who was formerly Innovation Advisor to the NHS and Co-Founder of the NHS Innovation Accelerator, said new technologies like AI have the potential to prevent thousands of avoidable deaths each year if carefully tested and rolled out in a responsible way following expert guidance. Proven AI tools could also prevent tens of thousands of hospitalisations each year, significantly reducing the pressure on Britain's hospitals. 

In addition, AI can unlock vast cost and operational efficiencies across the NHS and social care, said Dr Maruthappu, saving billions of pounds each year, and creating the fiscal headroom the new Government needs to rebuild health and social care. Recent reports have shown AI-led reforms could create £12bn of fiscal space a year by the end of this parliamentary term, and £40bn a year within a decade.

"The UK has the opportunity to be a global leader in how AI is used in health and social care," said Dr Maruthappu. "We have the talent; we have one of the largest integrated health systems in the world; and we clearly have the need, given the pressures on the NHS. But this is a make-or-break moment for us in history: we can't let this opportunity go to waste.

"Every day we delay applying AI to health and social care, we fall behind in the long journey to improving NHS productivity. The Government should urgently appoint an expert taskforce to take the reins on safely applying AI across health and social care."

AI could also help address major workforce gaps in health and social care, Cera said, attracting, training and retaining hundreds of thousands of new employees in two sectors plagued by staff shortages. Just last week, Skills for Care predicted social care alone would need half a million more workers within the next 15 years to provide care for a rapidly ageing population, while the NHS will need to fill a workforce gap of at least 360,000 people within the next 12 years. 

AI could also unlock unprecedented productivity increases for frontline NHS and social care staff, Cera said. NHS productivity plummeted by 23% during the pandemic, and remains 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels, compounding its workforce challenges.

"Health and social care have been slow to digitalise - a technology which came about 20-odd years ago," said Dr Maruthappu, "and this has already cost us dearly across areas including workforce efficiency and retention, the prevention and treatment of avoidable conditions, health research and far beyond.

"If we are equally slow in embracing AI, health and social care will well and truly be left in the dark ages; and our social care system in particular will be overwhelmed by a rapidly ageing population. We must act now to fully embrace the power of new technologies like AI to revolutionise how we deliver care - empowering each worker to deliver much more, higher-quality, more preventative care, to more people."

As well as saving money and lives, Dr Maruthappu said AI could be transformative for unlocking economic growth across health and social care, aiding faster, more accurate diagnostics and prognostics, and helping to identify new drugs and treatments. 

New Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting recently called for health and social care to be married with life sciences and med tech to unlock economic growth for the UK, saying "we can be a powerhouse for life sciences and med tech. It's time we rethink our role in government: we are no longer a public services department but an economic growth department."

"AI can rapidly spot patterns and trends at scale," explained Dr Maruthappu, "completely revolutionising how we develop and test new drugs, and treat people. It can also help us rapidly and more safely match the right people with the right treatment options at scale - transforming health outcomes and quality of life for millions of people."

The taskforce Cera is calling for should bring together HealthTech pioneers with experts from across the health and social care landscape, including NHS representatives, clinicians, regulators, unions, social care representatives, academics and more. Cera said it should also comprise experts in deploying AI to recruit, upskill and retain large workforces. 

Cera's call for a Responsible AI Taskforce for Health and Social Care is one of five tangible, low-cost recommendations the home care provider is urging the new Government to prioritise during its first 100 days in power.

Cera's five recommendations for the First 100 Days of the New UK Government are: 

1. Accelerate hospital discharges by encouraging the adoption of "Trusted Assessor Frameworks" nationwide, improving partnership working between hospitals and social care providers. 

   • Trusted Assessor Frameworks are co-designed agreements between hospitals and care providers, empowering authorised "Trusted Assessors" to draw up home care plans so patients can be rapidly discharged from hospital. 

   • Trusted Assessors could be employees of the care provider or of the hospital, but they are authorised to join up services between the two, reducing the time it takes for patients to be safely discharged from hospital to home.

   • Encouraging more widespread adoption of these frameworks will help solve the crisis in Britain's hospitals, freeing up beds for new patients, improving NHS productivity and ensuring patients get the care they need at home. 

     
     

2. Make care more of a career:

   • Introducing a Digital Care Passport so carers can carry proof of skills gained from one employer to the next.

   • Prioritising the rollout of the Care Workforce Pathway for adult social care.

     
     

3. Introduce incentives that put patients first, encouraging social care providers to embrace innovation, prevention and home-first care, including the consideration of a "value-based care model" as has been adopted in several other countries. 

The Department for Health and Social Care should explore the viability and desirability of both financial and non-financial incentives for social care providers to find new, more efficient ways of keeping people out of hospital.

4. Advance healthcare research for our ageing population by making clinical trials more accessible for people of all ages and demographics, with a particular focus on over-65s.

5. Harness the power of new technologies like AI by creating a Responsible AI Taskforce for Health and Social Care - with a focus on prevention, productivity, and scaling better health outcomes for patients.

Read more in City AM.

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