2022 was a challenging year for people across the UK. The continuous effects of the pandemic, the worst flu season in England in a decade, and the cost-of-living crisis are all affecting physical and mental health. By October last year, there were a record 7.2 million people waiting for NHS treatment and 2023 so far has seen almost daily crises. Winter pressures are normal for the NHS, but this is on a different level; and in the broader economy, 2.5 million working age adults are now inactive due to long-term sickness.

Early diagnosis for prevention of disease progression

Waiting for patients to crash into hospital and dealing with the consequences has never been the ideal approach. Seventy per cent of hospital bed-days in the NHS are now occupied by patients suffering from chronic conditions, conditions where the tools and medicines already exist for people to be diagnosed and treated in primary care or in the community, and their disease progression prevented and/or slowed so that they can stay OUT of hospital and IN the workforce. Alongside the Government’s current focus on pay demands, workforce shortages and waiting lists issues, we need to be laying the foundations NOW for the prevention revolution – identifying patients earlier with investment in diagnostics, health data, and earlier broader access to the most effective interventions.

Ambitious and scalable purpose-led partnerships

The Health and Care Act 2022 brought forward new legislation to ensure that collaboration across the healthcare sector is easier to manage and to encourage partnership between academia, industry, healthcare systems and governments to expand the pool of shared value we create together for patients and society. Partnership is at the centre of how AstraZeneca operates. We showed through the pandemic what is possible through ambitious, purpose-led partnership and we are now stepping up with the same mind to address the epidemics of chronic disease, rare diseases, and cancer. The results are striking, for example:

OPERA is a partnership in Scotland between academia, the NHS, government, and industry to accelerate the diagnostic pathway for heart failure using handheld devices and smart patient management which has reduced waiting times to diagnosis from 12 months to 4 weeks and is now being implemented nationally.

SENTINEL is a partnership with Hull University Teaching Hospital’s NHS Trust, on behalf of Hull Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), to optimise asthma care and reduce over-reliance on rescue treatments now being implemented in over 230 Primary Care Networks, health boards and federations across the UK.

We have an early cancer diagnosis partnership with Greater Manchester Cancer Alliance & Qure.ai to demonstrate the impact of AI-enabled triage on chest X-rays to diagnose lung cancer earlier. This initial work will involve more than 250,000 people over the next six months, and I am hopeful the results could revolutionise earlier diagnosis of lung and other cancers.

Bigger and better things ahead

As we move into 2023, whilst not ignoring the challenges, we can also afford to feel optimistic. Looking beyond the crisis, the creation of Integrated Care Systems, a focus on early diagnostics and prevention and a new collaboration model of ambitious purpose-led partnerships provide a generational opportunity to transform healthcare delivery for the benefit of all.

I’m excited to scale the incredible work we’ve already started but our ambition should go way beyond “doing more”, towards truly ambitious national transformation and implementation partnerships. Healthcare should be, and can be, collaborative by nature, but sectors which have historically operated in silos need to start collaborating. Imagine the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the NHS at all levels working WITH industry and other partners to deliver the Life Science Vision and tackle the Core20PLUS5 priorities. Working together we can accelerate the position of the UK as a life sciences powerhouse AND build a fairer, more sustainable NHS. Now that’s a new year’s resolution worth making.

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED BY TOM KEITH-ROACH ON HIS PERSONAL LINKEDIN PROFILE ON 19 JANUARY 2023.