The benefits of experience

As the UK’s National Health Service approaches its 75th birthday, International Director Ged Byrne discusses new ways for global health systems to access its experience and knowledge via the NHS Consortium

The NHS has seen a huge amount of innovation in the past 75 years - from public private partnerships (PPPs) to pandemics, the rise of the internet and the birth of digital health to the beginnings of genomics and personalised medicine.

It saw the first IVF baby born and the earliest hand transplant take place.

It conducted the world’s first mass vaccination programme, for diphtheria and polio, in 1958 and it was the first health system to initiate the latest, for COVID-19 in 2020.

In nearly 75 years it has seen its share of mistakes, mis-steps, learning and lessons. It has amassed a huge amount of data, IP and experience, both right and wrong, in the delivery of universal healthcare.

But there is always a long way to go on the journey to outstanding.

With a huge amount to learn and share, the NHS o ers an opportunity for health systems around the world to benefit from its experience. Through the NHS Consortium we have created an easier way for our international partners and friends to access the knowledge, expertise and experience of our 75 years, while also giving us the facility to access their examples and opportunities for our own health system.

The NHS Consortium

For the last 10-15 years the NHS has started to forge partnerships around the world. My own team at Health Education England (HEE) has worked extensively creating earn, learn and return programmes in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Individual NHS providers such as Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Great Ormond Street Hospital have provided consultancy work and knowledge to their colleagues across the globe. Our ambition is to build on these strong foundations to create a single, broad and welcoming front door to the NHS for the international healthcare community.

The new NHS Consortium initiative, launching at Arab Health, will help international healthcare leaders to reach into the NHS and be provided with expertise, partnership, collaboration and friendship. The aim is to help build and develop existing health systems, enhance the NHS and create long lasting alliances to help face down the global health challenges of the future.

In 2023 the re-organisation of the NHS will mean that some of our nationwide functions will merge.

My own department at Health Education England along with NHS Digital, our national public health function formerly known as Public Health England, our regulators at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, along with our regional bodies for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, will become a new ‘NHS England’.

As part of this merger, this body will sit within the centralised NHS and provide international engagement and partnership for international opportunity, both commercial and philanthropic.

With ‘bottom up’ engagement from individual NHS trusts and organisations paving the way, and continuing to create opportunities for partnership, the NHS Consortium will create a ‘top down’ approach to engaging with the NHS for global partners.

The globalisation of healthcare

Our hope is that we will have global conversations at every level, from Governments and health systems to operators and payors, to discover where our common problems and challenges lie. We will also explore how we can assist each other to deliver high quality universal health coverage worldwide.

By identifying the right individuals, experience, IP and, most importantly, the right peer to peer conversations we will shed light on mutual ways to help each other. Enabling other healthcare systems to learn from our successes and failures in the UK will ensure that our own knowledge and understanding of di erent global approaches are up to date.

It is only through direct consultation and collaboration from peer to peer, clinician to clinician, educator to educator and administrator to administrator that we will learn where we can have an impact through vital transfer of learnings.

Understanding the NHS

The key to this engagement and activity is to understand what the NHS is and what it o ers.

• The NHS is the national healthcare system of the United Kingdom

• It is free at the point of delivery and provides universal health coverage to the entire population of the United Kingdom

• It is not an international clinical operator

While the NHS is made up of a multitude of provider organisations (or Trusts) that span everything from primary care to mental health and acute & specialist hospitals, it is not (by and large) an international clinical operator. In rare cases individual NHS trusts may get involved in operational partnerships outside the UK with overseas providers, but this is very much not the norm.

•It is a global knowledge partner

The NHS is an organisation with a wealth of knowledge, IP and experience that can be shared for the benefit of patients everywhere. By discovering the ways in which other global systems have dealt with their issues, the NHS will acquire valuable tools to move forward. Such is the nature of true partnership.

•It is philanthropic

Our partnerships extend to working with aid agencies, the WHO and across the world to support e orts to ensure universal health coverage for all, even the poorest in our global society.

•It is also commercial

The NHS also o ers paid-for consultancy. It has the ability to use knowledge, experience and IP to provide commercial and paid-for solutions to providers, Governments and payors across the world. Our knowledge and advice is not theoretical; it is real and practical, based on 75 years of valuable lived experience.

•Most important of all, we are listening and we are open for business kevin.miles@hee.nhs.uk

It’s about conversation, discussion and opportunity. Contact me, my team or our partners at Healthcare World and let’s have a conversation about where the NHS fits into your health systems, your plans, your aspirations and ideas.