Improving Patient Outcomes Through Digital Innovation at the Heart of EHI LIVE 2016

    BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, September 27, 2016 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Dr Harpreet Sood, Senior Fellow, Chairman and Chief Executive's Office, NHS England, will speak about health tech and innovation in the ehi LIVE Keynotes conference.

This is one of 10 free-to-attend conferences running alongside the exhibition at the UK's largest digital health event, which takes place at NEC Birmingham from 1-2 November 2016.

Dr Sood's role at NHS England involves looking at how best to spread digital innovation across the NHS. As a Keynote speaker, Dr Sood will discuss how digital and technological progress can and will bring about change to help the most important element of the healthcare system - the patients.

NHS digital technology priorities include enabling the various service providers to better communicate patient care needs to each other, as well as ensuring health tech develops on a sustainable footing, ensuring consistency and reducing variability across the NHS.

Dr Sood's work for NHS England focuses on two main aspects. The first is around digitising secondary care as part of the wider transformation agenda in local geographies and getting all levels of the workforce enthused and engaged about it. "That is why from the centre, we are continuously highlighting why change is important," he says.

The second focus is on prevention, for example, looking at how digitisation can be used in the fight to prevent diabetes.

Recent developments mean financial incentives for innovators and SMEs will see health tech taken up more widely across NHS service providers. Such is the commitment to scaling up digital health technology under the Five Year Forward View, NHS England is setting up centres of global digital excellence with a GBP100+ million funding pot.

"It is important to say for innovators and SMEs that we are at a time where resources are challenging and we are going through a period of transformation and innovation. We need to see some quick wins, but we also need to get leadership across the system about why the investment in innovation and its uptake is important," says Dr Sood.

"The NHS Innovation and Technology Tariff will allow those organisations that are ready to secure services across the system to tap into this tariff and apply for it. If we can identify a whole host of applications that are ready to scale up, the next question is how do we help them from a financial reimbursement perspective."

The event will also address NHS structural complexities which make it a bigger task for outside organisations to work with the NHS. "From an SME perspective, we see the challenges, and how they end up having to sell to multiple providers and organisations. A lot of them do not have huge sales forces so it is important for us to think about creating an ecosystem that works for all," adds Dr Sood.

"An event such as ehi LIVE brings together such a wide cross section of commissioners, users and developers and it provides a great opportunity to discuss these issues and share ideas which will go on to make a real difference in patients' lives."

Dr Sood will join a number of speakers from NHS Digital, NHS England, the Royal College of Physicians, NHS trusts, GP practices and industry exploring the theme of this year's event: 'From implementation to patient outcomes'. This programme includes more real life case studies of patient-centred programmes across the sessions, as well as a new clinical track, which will focus on mental health.

Other new features for the 2016 show, include:
- the Knowledge Hub featuring leading experts imparting their insight on the latest technologies that are changing the industry;
- techUK START UP to present the newest innovative and disruptive technologies in digital health being developed specifically by start-up technology companies;
- the two day Developer Challenge tasking developers with creating industry changing solutions live on site to help better NHS processes, in partnership with NHS Digital;
- a cyber security zone on the show floor to showcase the latest technology in protecting the
NHS from cybercrimes with real industry case studies.

Back by popular demand, the Big Red Networking bus will sit at the heart of the ehi LIVE exhibition allowing visitors, speakers and exhibitors to network, connect and do business.

ehi LIVE is free to attend and over 4,000 visitors are expected including health and care CIOs, COOs, CEOs, health professionals, senior NHS managers, major digital health industry players and SMEs.

To gain fast track access into the exhibition, conference streams, visitors are asked to register in advance.

Informa Life Sciences Exhibitions, in charge of the healthcare portfolio within Informa's Global Exhibitions division, organises 26 exhibitions yearly covering the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe and US market, connecting more than 150,000 healthcare professionals worldwide and offering a range of marketing solutions for companies involved with the healthcare sector. Over 100 congresses take place in parallel with the exhibitions.

Informa Life Sciences Exhibitions publishes four international healthcare magazines, offers Dothealth, a healthcare portal showcasing over 40,000 healthcare companies and runs Healthy Change, an online recruitment portal.

www.informalifesciences.com

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