Report: Some clinicians believe tech adoption is more about politics, less about improving care

The adoption of technology in the NHS is more closely tied to meeting a "political or commercial imperative" rather than improving care, according to about a dozen stakeholders from across the health system who were interviewed for a new report. Published by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, or RSA, the "Patient AI" paper - first covered by the Health Service Journal - sought to identify how the introduction of emerging technologies was "influencing commissioning and clinical practice" across the NHS. The RSA said understanding and agreeing on the purposes for the deployment of new tools and systems needed to be the "starting point for a more constructive conversation" in order to tackle the "embedded scepticism" that it was not being done for the right reasons. The organisation carried out interviews under the Chatham House Rule with professionals involved in the development, procurement and use of data-driven technologies for the health service in England earlier this year. It outlined the work done in partnership with NHSX, the unit for digital, data and technology, and found interviewees believed that a lot of the challenges in embedding new tools stemmed from the fact that the NHS did not see itself as a "digital organisation".