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  1. Long reads
2 February 2009updated 24 Sep 2015 11:01am

The great survivor: another 60 years

Liam Donaldson looks to the horizon and considers some of the issues that may arise for health servi

By Liam Donaldson

The founding fathers of the National Health Service (NHS), calling to mind the decline in major infectious diseases, foresaw a future for the NHS where it would be concerned primarily with the maintenance of health. They even predicted falling demand for its services.

Current predictions about the challenges for the NHS in the short and medium term point to the “usual suspects”: an ageing population, advances in medical technology, growing consumer expectations and burgeoning pools of chronic disease.

It is difficult to contradict the assumption that, a decade from now, the NHS will face more of the same. Need and demand for healthcare will continue to grow, particularly among an elderly population where many individuals no longer suffer from one disease but several: so-called “co-morbidity”. A woman in her late 70s who has had a minor stroke but also suffers from diabetes, arthritis and heart disease is not an unusual patient. However, she would have been when the NHS was founded.

The care needs of millions, often compounded by absent family support, will turn on coordination of care and long-term support to maximise independence. Add to this the ethical and anti-ageism point that new drugs and other treatments should not be denied to older people and the inexorable rise in the volume and complexity of NHS workload will continue unabated.

In response, the NHS, a decade ahead, will surely have shifted its organisational structures and processes towards integration of primary, hospital, community and social elements. Currently, they are too compartmentalised and patients move across care boundaries like ships in a storm. Many of the structures of the NHS were designed to provide reliable, comprehensive care for people with health emergencies and one-off illnesses. New models of patient-centred care will engage expert patients in the long-term management of their own health, with clinicians there to advise, guide and support their choices. These services will need to be planned and designed in a way that has never been done before.

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The consumerist nature of an increasingly demanding society of baby boomers, generations X and Y and their successors will require a significant shift from the stoic “make do and mend” of the wartime generations. While there are differences between the roles of patient and customer, these boundaries will blur. Advanced internet systems will enable patients to consult with expert doctors across the world. Pressure to go with the digital, rather than traditional, referral channels will be enormous. The NHS will have adapted to this, incorporating a new notion of customer service into its ethos and functioning.

A future service must be free from the geographical variations in quality of care that are too common now. The new focus on quality that has emerged from Lord Darzi’s NHS review will have driven the service towards a radical reinvention, where decisions are made to enhance quality rather than minimise cost. Quality will be the currency of the NHS a decade from now.

Over the horizon, into 2030 and beyond, new medical frontiers will have opened up. Today’s young Turks of medical research will be stroking their grey beards with satisfaction as science and technology bring untold benefits to the bedside. Stem cells will repair damaged, diseased and ageing organs and tissues; gene therapy will cure inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. Techniques that can control the immune system will switch off autoimmune disease; drugs and cell manipulation will suppress many forms of cancer; and robots will allow surgeons to perform intricate operations on the beating heart.

Three decades from now, it will be routine for babies to have their genetic profile stored on a microchip for life. Faulty genes will be corrected. However, only a proportion of disease is genetically determined and, with the growth of new therapeutic opportunities, most of us will be patients. Advances in diagnostic equipment and scanners, their miniaturisation and intelligent features will move them out of hospital and into the hands of patients.

The impact of these changes will be profound: patients and families diagnosing, monitoring and treating their own conditions will bring about a sea change in the traditional relationship between health professional and patient and the organisational structures of the NHS.

Underpinning all this is the hope that citizens in all walks of life will take responsibility for their own health and its maintenance. In some ways, this is the most uncertain field of prediction, given the intractability of unhealthy lifestyles, addiction and health inequalities. Yet, surely future generations will look back with incredulity at newsreel footage of smokers, obese children and city centres swarming with binge drinkers.

With all these changes must be the imperative to transform global health inequality, with new generations of vaccines and the benefits of advanced technology and medical science.

Predicting the health and healthcare landscape on the 120th anniversary of the NHS, 60 years from now, requires a step into the kingdom of futurology. Here, what wonders could the “medicine of the impossible” yield? Walk-in, walk-out chambers which diagnose disease and then reset the body’s functions to normal? Replacement of diseased or aged organs with advanced tissue engineered or digital alternatives? Doubling of the human lifespan? The digitisation of the human mind?

The NHS has been remarkably resilient in absorbing 60 years of change in disease patterns and advances in medical science. There is every reason for us to be confident that it is a success story that will run and run.

Sir Liam Donaldson is chief medical officer

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