If you have any departmental or Trust news you'd like to share, please get in touch.

lockdown to easePrime Minister’s roadmap for England to ease lockdown will allow the EBME Expo to go ahead on 30th June

The EBME website is pleased to announce that due to the lockdown roadmap outlined below, the EBME Expo will be able to go ahead on 30th June to 1st July 2021 at the Marshall Arena, Milton Keynes. We will ensure covid precautions are in place in line with the government advice. Those of you who registered for last year’s event are already automatically registered for this year.

If you have not yet registered, please book you place here: https://www.ebme.co.uk/registration-options

NHSXPatients with COVID-19 are set to benefit from faster treatment, improved outcomes and shorter hospital stays thanks to the use of the latest artificial intelligence.

The National COVID-19 Chest Imaging Database (NCCID) was established to fulfil the NHS AI Lab’s mission of enabling the safe adoption of AI technologies, with an immediate focus on combatting the pandemic.

A joint initiative between NHSX, the British Society of Thoracic Imaging (BSTI), Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust and Faculty, the NCCID is designed to enable the development of software that helps doctors and researchers to:

Digital services provided by the NHS have seen a huge increase in usage throughout 2020 as a result of social distancing and the need to access healthcare remotely. Since the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, tech services provided by NHS Digital have seen unprecedented levels of usage by both patients and frontline staff. Some of the NHS technologies that have seen the biggest increases are listed below:

NHS website
The NHS website is one of the biggest health-related websites in the world; usually attracting around 360m visits a year, which is around 30 million visits a month. It has been a key platform in the NHS’ response to the coronavirus pandemic and at the time of publishing had already had an estimated 803m visits this year. The number of users peaked in March 2020 with 120m estimated visits (the highest ever) and again in September 2020 with 81m estimated visits. There have been 160m direct visits to the coronavirus hub landing page since the end of January 2020.

An innovative blood test that may spot more than 50 types of cancer will be piloted by the NHS in a world-leading programme was announced by NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens.

illuminaThe Galleri blood test, developed by GRAIL, can detect early stage cancers through a simple blood test, and will be piloted with 165,000 patients in a world-first deal struck by NHS England. Research on patients with signs of cancer has already found that the test, which checks for molecular changes, can identify many types that are difficult to diagnose early, such as head and neck, ovarian, pancreatic, oesophageal and some blood cancers.

If the NHS programme shows the test also works as expected for people without symptoms it will be rolled out to become routinely available. The test could help meet the NHS Long Term Plan goal of increasing the proportion of cancers caught early, which can be the key to reducing cancer mortality. Patients whose condition is diagnosed at ‘stage one’ typically have between five and 10 times the chance of surviving compared with those found at ‘stage four’.

mhraErik Hansson, the European Commission’s deputy head of devices, was an expert panelist at the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society’ 2020 Euro Convergence. The plenary, held on 26 October 2020, discussed global perspectives on the 2020 regulatory landscape with 16 other regulatory experts from organizations including government agencies, notified bodies and manufacturers. Hansson leads the European Commission’s operational team dealing with the implementation of the EU Medical Devices Regulation (MDR) and In Vitro Diagnostics Regulation (IVDR), that will manage the changes recently deferred to 2021, and the coordination between EU member states and other stakeholders.

The European Parliament and Council approved the proposal to delay the full implementation of the Medical Device Regulation 2017/745 (MDR) for one year to 26 May 2021. This means that the full applicability of the MDR will fall outside of the transition period agreed with the EU.

This postponement will provide much-needed relief to the medical devices industry and the EU Member States for which the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic constitutes an immense burden. The public health crisis has created a demand for substantial additional resources, as well as an increased availability of important medical devices such as medical gloves, surgical masks, equipment for intensive care and other medical equipment.

Like what you see?

Hit the buttons below to follow us, you won't regret it...