Launch of the innovative health technologies programme

Citation

Morris, B. (2001), "Launch of the innovative health technologies programme", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 14 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2001.06214fab.009

Launch of the innovative health technologies programme

Launch of the innovative health technologies programme

Innovative health technologies (IHTs) offer promise as well as threat for both the sick and the well, innovations in’genetics, imaging technologies, telemedicine, cloning and stem cell research will challenge people's traditional concepts of health, disease and what it means to be a patient or carer while posing a major challenge to the’NHS. The UK Innovative Health Technologies Research Programme, launched on 8 May, will examine the’fundamental shifts they are likely to bring about. The £5 million programme is funded jointly by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Medical Research Council. Over the next five years it will explore the role that these and other new technologies now play – and will increasingly play in future – in redefining the way we manage and experience health and medicine. An indication of the wider significance of these issues for the UK private sector is that the programme has also secured collaborative funding from GlaxoSmithKline.

The Director of the programme, Professor Andrew Webster, based at the University of York, argues that:

… innovative health technologies, such as genetic diagnostics, pose new questions not just for doctor and patient, but also the hospitals, regulatory agencies, charities, and insurance companies that confront them. They also challenge our understanding of the body itself. They ask where its anatomical and social boundaries lie, and who has control and rights over them.

There are a number of key changes that IHTs are likely to bring. Professor Webster thinks that there will be much greater uncertainty in medical diagnosis. This will be coupled with more negotiation over how risk is allocated by health practitioners, counsellors and those consulting them. He says that as a result:

… we are likely to see a gradual redefining of patient populations into differentiated groups that are more, or less, appropriate targets for medical intervention.

Health is likely to be accessed through a range of new (non-clinical) routes – in sport, leisure, Web-based, or retail settings for example. He also believes that there will be a movement away from professional self-regulation towards the reshaping of clinical governance and notions of consent to reflect this more complex world of health delivery and our trust in it.

The programme offers a first, systematic evaluation of IHTs conducted from within the social sciences across the UK, and is unique in bringing together social and clinical sciences in many of the projects it is supporting.

Further information from Professor Webster. Tel: (+44) (0) 1904 434740 or the programme Web site at www.york.ac.uk/res/iht