Procurement Needs Huge Cultural Shift for a Digital NHS

This week Public Finance ran an opinion piece from Colin Cram, a public sector consultant specialising in procurement who has worked in the UK public sector for over 40 years. He discusses, at some length, how a digitally enabled UK NHS (National Health Service) could transform medical treatment and patient experience, but “needs a major cultural shift in procurement and commissioning.” He explains how “the scale and complexity of the NHS appears to be a serious obstacle to digitisation” with thousands of smaller organisations all at differing levels of digital capability. But in terms of procurement, he also explains that “many businesses report that NHS procurement personnel and commissioners create further obstacles to the adoption of new technologies, with unnecessarily narrow and bureaucratic interpretations of EU and UK procurement law and resistance to change.” The full article calling for a “huge cultural change in many NHS organisations,” can be read here.