Healthcare Industries Task Force (HITF) report
The Healthcare Industries Task Force (HITF) is a joint
government-healthcare industry initiative that brought
together government and industry leaders to identify steps to
develop and strengthen performance of the UK healthcare
industry and maximise the benefit to patients from healthcare
products.
The Task Force was the first of its kind at a strategic level in
this country and it brought together senior decision-makers from
Government and industry to identify opportunities for closer
working for the benefit of all stakeholders, including patients and
healthcare professionals.
The HITF report - launched by Lord Warner and Sir Christopher
O'Donnell from Imperial College in November 2004 - was the
result of 18 months of work by over 200 experts from government,
industry and the medical profession.
Its key outputs form an exciting blueprint that could lead to
major medical breakthroughs, improve quality of care for patients
and herald a new era of co-operation between the NHS and the
medical technology industry.
The report contained five major outputs:
- A new Device Evaluation Service (DES) to make it easier to
identify new devices and accelerate the process of getting these
used across the UK.
- A modern approach to NHS regional procurement so that the best
technology is bought for the best value.
- An Innovation Centre to pull together all the innovative work
done in the NHS and link this to the existing networks around which
the Medical Devices Faraday operates.
- The building of a new research and development capacity that
gives more prominence to developing new medical devices.
- Activity to assess the needs, capacity for delivery and
benefits associated with a more structured approach to training and
development, especially in relation to the use of medical
devices.
HITF- the outcome.
The Healthcare Industries Task Force was finally closed as a
process with publication of the report of the Strategic
Implementation Group in March 2007. This document is of great
importance as a mandate and frame work for the future of the of the
Healthcare industry’s interactions with policy makers and
government.
Without reference to the specific outputs and initiatives it is
still possible to count the effort as a substantial success.
Increasing understanding-
Through widespread engagement with officials from Department of
Health and Department for Trade and Industry the healthcare
industry has massively increased the level of understanding on the
part of officials as well as creating a much more effective network
of contacts across those bodies.
Prior to HITF the level of understanding was surprisingly low,
and confusion with the pharmaceutical industries alarmingly high.
Whilst there is more work to be done we are far better off now than
we were when HITF kicked off in 2003.
Overcoming differences-
Until the final meeting there were doubts as to whether the
process would be completed due to irreconcilable differences in the
area of procurement processes. This part of the dialogue had been
very constructive within the Working Group on Procurement
Processes.
Unfortunately the commercial directorate of the Department for
health was implementing a series of programmes that were neither
consistent with the work of this group nor in the spirit of
collaborative behaviour enshrined in the working principles behind
the HITF process.
At the final hour the labours of the working group yielded
results and the final report is quite clear in advocating
mechanisms for ensuring that procurement activities should be
orientated around delivering innovation and value, for the benefit
of patients and the health care system as a whole.
Tangible outputs-
The first tangible output was the endorsement of Medical Devices
Faraday Partnership and its subsequent transition into Medical
Devices Knowledge Transfer Network. This is a key element of the
landscape, wiring up inventors, sources of technology and
collaborators in idea development. It has already returned more
than its modest investment.
The National Investment Centre is now established and yielding
tools to support and support for entrepreneurs and NHS investors.
The Training Hub for Operative Technologies and Adoption Hub have
been established to stimulate development of effective training and
procurement models to catalyse the adoption of new technologies.
These were conceived out of a desire to balance the need to
aggregate procurement skills with the need to engage clinicians and
managers in the process of identifying and employing technologies
in pursuit of improved clinical outcomes and
productivity.
There is much work to be done in this area as the NHS continues
to focus simply on cash saving by buying big rather than by buying
well. The centre for evidenced based procurement was a key output
of the process that is intended to provide a relatively light touch
in evaluating the potential of new technologies. It is key that
this retains its original purpose and independence to act as a
catalyst for new technology adoption. The medical technology
industry is now well embedded in the activities of the UK Clinical
Research Collaboration, which is focused on the creation of an
improved environment for clinical research in the UK and conversion
of research into treatments and jobs in the future.
Work continues with the Medical and Healthcare Products
Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on several fronts as the Medical Device
Directives approaches closure of their latest review, and we are
faced with very special challenges with human tissue engineered
product regulatory frameworks. The industry was pleased to hear
that auto-identification technology issues featured in the HITF
report gave rise to Coding for Success: Simple Technology for
safer patient care, a Department of Health initiative to
address the complex issues surrounding capturing the full value of
radio-frequency identification, bar coding and other methods of
identifying the products used in the treatment of patients and
using this information to its full potential. The report also
confirmed the importance of training in the safe use of medical
technologies.
Progress on HITF- what will happen
next?
Procurement-
Continue to work on a procurement landscape that balances the need
to procure efficiently with generating appropriate mechanisms to
accelerate the adoption of new technologies and ensure innovative
companies are encouraged to bring the best of what they have to
market. This requires the generation of a new set of values for
professionals and specific activity to improve the environment for
small innovative companies following recommendations made in
Cooksey review.
Understanding SMEs-
To help focus and better coordinate efforts to stimulate and
encourage industry development there is commitment to develop a
better understanding of how small companies are established and
then grow into larger entities. Complementary to this is the
development of more refined metrics to identify and capture the key
precursors of future success for the sector, allowing us to target
our resources onto critical elements of business evolution and
increase the flow of successful small and medium sized enterprises.
The basis for and sources of inward investment combined with
mechanisms for effective export growth for companies operating in
the UK also play to an understanding of the way that businesses
emerge and what makes the UK an attractive place to establish
operations. Work will be done to piece together the whole landscape
in the full knowledge that companies that are operating in this
sector are being forced either to compete on a global scale or not
at all.
European Influence-
There will be continued focus on ensuring that the UK plays a full
role in shaping the European agenda for industry development. All
will be familiar with the role of Europe in shaping the regulatory
environment, but increasingly public procurement and competition
laws are shaped by Brussels and those too have a profound impact on
the environment in which we carry out our business, with increasing
blurring of the lines between public and private sectors and the
laws that govern behaviour of each of these areas.
Strategic Progress
In order
to ensure continued focus on all of the above there will be a small
strategic group established comprising both senior government and
industry leaders and co-chaired by the minister. This will oversee
progress and deal with emerging challenges. This strategic group
will be a critical element of leverage to maintain both dialogue
and action on matters of concern to patients, clinicians, the
healthcare system and industry.