Sally Chisolm: NHS technology adoption chief

There’s a strange paradox when it comes to technology and the NHS. You’d expect innovations that cut the number of hospital visits a patient has to make - for example, a 30-minute breast cancer test that means a patient can receive an operation the same day - to be snapped up immediately. But in an organisation as complex as the National Health Service, things aren’t that simple.

‘From a patient point of view, it’s absolutely fantastic,’ said Sally Chisholm, chief executive of the NHS’s Technology Adoption Centre (NTAC). ‘You save them a second operation and they know much more quickly the level of their cancer. But from a hospital point of view, normally when that patient comes back for their second operation, the hospital would be getting paid more money, because that’s the way the payment works in the NHS: it’s linked to activity. So apart from the quality, and the fact hospitals want to do the best they can for their patients, from a financial point of view we would say that’s a real disincentive.’