The fund, run by a Health Innovation Council, is aimed at persuading the NHS to acquire, adopt and spread cost-effective new technologies. The announcement comes just days before the NHS looks set to emerge as the biggest winner from the government’s comprehensive spending review, publication of which is now expected next week.

The NHS is expected to win at least an average 3 per cent annual real-terms rise in spending over the next few years. That is half the current rate of growth – but appreciably more than any other big department or service will secure over the next three years.

Almost a year late, ministers also plan to announce on Friday the winners of a new framework contract that will make it easier for primary care trusts to bring in private sector help with healthcare commissioning.

Lord Darzi’s interim report set out his vision for a 21st-century “world class” health service, although the professor of surgery said on Wednesday that details of how the vision would be turned into reality would have to await his final report next spring.

A first step is the Health Innovation Council, which follows a recommendation from last year’s Cooksey report for “a more systematic approach to the adoption of new technologies”.

It was not immediately clear on Wednesday night, however, how the new council will dovetail with, or revamp, the existing NHS Innovation and Improvement Institute, which itself was created after the abolition in 2005 of the NHS Modernisation Agency.

That was scrapped after ministers declared that “modernisation is now embedded in the NHS” and that the agency was no longer needed. On Wednesday, however, health department sources acknowledged that the NHS still struggled to adopt new technologies swiftly.

Mark Walport, the director of the Wellcome Trust, which will jointly administer the fund with the health department, said its aim was to “bridge the gap from discovery to application”.

Lord Darzi said the council “will provide leadership and advocacy with key decision-makers in the NHS on the benefits to patients, the NHS and the country, of adopting cost-effective new technologies and models of care”.

From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f95d07be-7206-11dc-8960-0000779fd2ac.html

Health Direct wonders quite where the creation of yet another health quango in addition to NICE and the NHS Innovation and Improvement Institute is going to lead?