Speaking at the BIR/Toshiba Medical Mayneord Award lecture at UKRCO 2017, Professor Keith McNeil, former CEO of Addenbrookes Hospital, called for more meticulous documentation and analysis of data to drive better efficiency and insight. He pointed out that more data has been collected in the last two years than in the rest of human history. He also argued that good data collection involves capturing it at the point of use through user-friendly technology, rather than asking clinicians to duplicate effort.
As the recipient of this year’s BIR/Toshiba Medical Mayneord Award, Professor McNeil delivered the eponymous lecture titled “A 21st Century NHS – Delivering Tomorrow’s Medicine, Today?” on Tuesday 13 June to an audience of radiologists, radiographers, scientists and other healthcare professionals gathered at UKRCO in Manchester.
His engaging presentation touched on conventional physics versus quantum physics, complex adaptive systems, leadership, interdependence, entanglement and artificial intelligence and he summed up one of the issues by quoting Arthur Schopenhaur: “The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought but which everyone sees.”
Professor McNeil is Chief Clinical Information Officer Health and Social Care and previously was Chief Executive Officer of Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge. Previously he spent two years as a senior transplant fellow at Papworth Hospital and a further five years working jointly at Papworth and Cambridge University Hospital as a cardio-pulmonary transplant and respiratory physician and director of the pulmonary vascular disease unit.
The talk was introduced by BIR President Andy Rogers who said “It was a pleasure to listen to Professor McNeil deliver the BIR/Toshiba Medical Mayneord Lecture. Listening to how data may drive healthcare improvement was fascinating and the BIR fulling supports any drive to enhance the capability of the NHS in this area. Data analytics will be a key growth area for our members.”
After the lecture, Professor McNeil was presented with a prize and a trophy. He said, “"We really do have an huge opportunity to transform the way we work through the power of information, and the NHS is uniquely poised to realise this potential. We can't do this alone however, and working in partnership with firms such as Toshiba will enable us to bring to bear cutting edge science and technology, and to translate this into delivering the triple aim of modern healthcare; namely better patient outcomes, a better patient experience and affordable healthcare across the system."
Mark Hitchman, Managing Director of Toshiba Medical, who presented the award, said, “We were all inspired by Professor Keith McNeil’s lecture, leading us all to think about managing chaos and big data into a recognisable strategy”.
You can view the lecture on the UKRC website here http://www.ukrc.org.uk/presentation-webcasts
Photograph: (left to right) Andy Rogers (BIR President), Professor Keith McNeil and Mark Hitchman (Managing Director, Toshiba Medical).
