NHS My Brilliant Idea

NHS South East Coast have set up a regional innovation fund of £2 million, to allow frontline staff develop ideas.

As you might expect an interim Director of Innovation has been appointed, which I suppose is necessary as a further £5 million will be bunged into fund every year, for the next four.

One example given in the press release from the South East Coast NHS, is this, a Telemedicine Team, at the Queen Victoria Hospital in West Sussex, who have set up a system to share information and expertise, using “secure” internet channels, which is great news meaning that patients wont have to be transferred to other hospitals to enable another medic to take a gander.

The only thing that bothers me is reference to “telemedicine system” which sounds like some computer consultant has got involved and has taken freely available technology given it a bit of spin, used words like secure and system , to repackage as an expensive solution.

Just going off on a tangent, I reckon with a broadband connection, email, the telephone and or maybe Skype(free) for video conferencing you could set up your own telemedicine for near zero cost, all you need then, is to rustle up some medics.

Here’s my brilliant idea, get managers who are a) competent b) have a proper job c) can prioritise and distinguish what’s important and what’s not d) sack whoever thought up this scheme. Hopefully this would result in a saving of £20 million plus.