The Cabinet Office has published a consultation, Transforming Public Procurement: Part 1 Consultation on draft regulations to implement the Procurement Bill. The purpose of the consultation is to seek feedback on the secondary legislation that is required to implement the new public procurement regime set out in the Public Procurement Bill 2022-23. The questions within the consultation seek to understand to what extent the draft secondary legislation provisions implement the policy intent as established in the Bill. The Government hopes that by improving the way public procurement is regulated, it can save the taxpayer money and make it easier for small businesses to work with the public sector. As well as this, the Government expects that the new regime will, provide greater flexibility for buyers to design their procurement processes, introduce an exclusions framework that will make it easier to exclude suppliers who have underperformed on other contracts, and allow faster competition processes for emergency buying, improving the ability to act at pace in situations similar to the COVID pandemic. The consultation opened on 19 June and will close on 28 July.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) recently announced the establishment of a Pharmaceutical Investment Company named Lifera. This new organisation has been created to enable the growth of the local biopharmaceutical industry, and to support Saudi Arabia’s position as a global pharmaceutical manufacturing destination. The focus of Lifera will be on manufacturing essential pharmaceutical products, including insulins, and vaccines. The global healthcare market is expected to evolve rapidly over the next decade with innovation in medicines and therapies, and advances in precision medicine. Lifera aims to drive formulation development, medicine development and manufacturing, as well as testing services for sterile pharmaceutical products. PIF intends to make targeted investments that strengthen Saudi Arabia’s supply chains, enhance access to pharmaceutical products, and enable cutting-edge technology transfer from international private sector partners. 

A new report on the healthcare data monetisation market has been released. The healthcare data market is expected to witness the fastest growth to 2028. Direct data monetisation in healthcare involves selling or licensing patient data to third-party organisations to generate revenue, which is driven by increasing demand for healthcare data, advancements in technology, regulatory changes, and financial pressures. The emergence of data marketplaces and platforms, where organisations can directly sell, and exchange healthcare data is driving the growth of this market. The demand for specific datasets, such as wearables data, is driving the adoption of these solutions. The healthcare payers segment accounted for the second-largest share of the healthcare data monetization market. The healthcare industry is moving to value-based care, because of which payers are faced with challenges to shift their business models. Payers need data analytics tools to overcome the challenges and enable better revenue recognition, new payment models, better options to patients, and fraud detection.

Technology and tools using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and so on have quickly started to transform the way healthcare facilities operate and how patients are cared for. According to one expert, digital healthcare could be advancing even faster than most professionals originally thought. Dr. Daniel Kraft is a long-time innovator and Stanford and Harvard-trained physician and scientist, as well as a general partner at Continuum Health Ventures and founder and chairman of Digital. Health and NeXT Med Health. According to Dr. Kraft, people are underestimating how quickly things are moving in the digital health field, particularly in terms of AI and ChatGPT: "You want to be aware of what's likely to be here in 2025 and 2033. We're looking at what we are going to be able to do with this new era of easy to obtain continuous information, which will lead to like the continuous physical exam, and how are clinicians and healthcare systems going to sift through all that to make it actionable and useful for prevention and longevity, healthspan, diagnostics and therapy".

A new online advice service to help the NHS and wider care system adopt and make use of new digital and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has been launched. The AI and Digital Regulations Service provides guidance for NHS and social care adopters and digital health innovators. The service offers, a website providing centralised, curated and up-to-date regulatory content for both developers and adopters of AI and data-driven technologies; and access to specialist support for both developers and adopters from the service partners. The service is a multi-agency collaboration between the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the Care Quality Commission, the Health Research Authority and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. It is funded by the NHS AI Lab. By collating information from all 4 organisations in one place, the site provides comprehensive guidance at each stage of the adoption pathway. The service can also respond to individual enquiries, making connections with relevant services or system partners.

A new article in The Financial Times discusses whether technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) could replace human therapists in helping people overcome mental illness. Due to a shortage of mental health professionals, and long waiting lists, many people are struggling to get the care they need. It has been reported that some Americans have been experimenting with using ChatGPT as an unofficial therapist. Whilst this technology has clear potential, mental health experts have warned that unsupervised AI “self-medication” could be very dangerous. For example, it could convince users that delusions were real or low self-esteem was justified.

According to the latest data from The Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN), the private healthcare sector experienced a significant increase in in-patient and day-case admissions in 2022. There were more private in-patient/day-case admissions in 2022 than in any previous year. The number of operations paid for with medical insurance in 2022 reached its highest levels since 2019. Overall, private referrals for insured and paying patients needing hospital admission hit 820,000 in 2022, compared to 757,000 in 2021 and 779,000 in 2019. According to Ian Gargan, chief executive of PHIN: “There is a whole combination of factors influencing this growth, with the long NHS waiting lists, and uncertainty around how long you’ll be waiting...The private sector has worked with the NHS since its inception and will continue to do so. We see it as a ‘twin track’ approach with both the public and private sector working together to ensure everyone gets the treatment they need.”

A new regulatory pathway, known as The Innovative Devices Access Pathway (IDAP), is set for launch later in 2023. It will be operated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), Health Technology Wales (HTW) and Scottish Health Technology Group (SHTG). The ambition of the new programme is to bring innovative technologies and solutions to the forefront of the NHS, through a new, integrated support service for developers that will include enhanced opportunities for engagement. Innovators of medical technology that addresses clinical needs are being encouraged to register for further information ahead of a planned 2023 pilot launch. The IDAP partners plan to use the lessons learned from the pilot to help develop the future IDAP pathway, creating an end-to-end visible framework that supports innovators generate the evidence they need to achieve regulatory approval, heath technology assessment decisions, and patient access in the NHS.