Engineering mindset could transform NHS, claims report

This is the key message of a newly published cross-disciplinary report from the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), the Royal College of Physicians and the Academy of Medical Sciences.

The NHS is one of the UK’s largest and most complex organisations, and faces a number of well-known challenges, from the impact of real-term reductions in government spending to the pressure of a growing ageing population. The RAEng-led report “Engineering better care: a systems approach to health and care design and continuous improvement” claims that it will only be able to effectively meet these challenges by applying the kind of systems-level approach common to engineering, an approach that gives careful consideration to the way every element of the system- in this case patients, carers, clinicians and other staff – interacts.

Prof John Clarkson, Cambridge University

Cambridge University’s Professor John Clarkson, who chaired the working group behind the report, told The Engineer that whilst a number of studies over the years have pointed to the healthcare benefits of systems engineering, the new study represents one of the most detailed efforts yet to describe what it is and how it might work in practice. “Healthcare is a complex system,” he said. “In engineering, we are well used to dealing with things that are complex and we’ve evolved a way of thinking to help us to cope with that -  the question is can we help deal with the complexity that emerges in healthcare?”