One of the most experienced healthcare figures in England predicts "revolutions" in how the NHS cares for us in the coming years.
A highly-decorated career saw Professor Sir Liam Donaldson ascend to the role of England's chief medical officer, while now he chairs the North East and North Cumbria NHS Integrated Care Board. Speaking on the NHS's 75th anniversary, he looked to the past and the future - and highlighted how he thinks big data, the miniaturisation of high-tech medical kit, and cutting-edge genetic research - including in the North East - could transform our health.
Over a career that has lasted more than half a century, Sir Liam has kept politicians in check, helped to launched life-saving heart units and - as one of the architects of the smoking ban - it's almost inevitable that his work will have made you healthier. Taking a long view on the NHS, he told ChronicleLive of how things had changed since he began working life as a junior doctor back in 1972.
"At that time, technology was very different," Sir Liam said. "We didn't have many of the scanners we had today and we relied much more heavily on the 'old fashioned' way of diagnosing illness - which was taking a very detailed story from the patient about their symptoms and, and then trying to match that with what we knew from textbooks and from our growing experience. Since then, things have moved on a lot."
Sir Liam said one of the most notable changes over that time was in patient outcomes. By way of example, he said: "I remember being on night duty as a junior doctor and I was putting a drip up on a little boy. His mother came across to me - and I didn't really know the case, I was just on duty for that particular ward, so I hadn't been looking after that patient - and she said to me, my son is dying and I want you to help him to live.
"I knew that he had acute leukaemia and in those days 95% of children died. Five per cent survived. There was the feeling of total helplessness because I knew that he was going to die and there was nothing I really could say to give hope to the mother.
"But today 95% of children with acute leukaemia survive. That's just in one person's professional lifetime, but complete transformation in care brought about by advances in medical technology."
Looking ahead, Sir Liam is expecting dramatic advances to continue. He said: "I think there are going to be some revolutions. One of the biggest changes on the horizon, is going to be the miniaturisation of equipment."
He said building-sized scanners could soon be a thing of the past - adding: "When you think that some of the scanners now are housed in their own buildings in hospitals, those are going to come out and get smaller and faster and more accurate. They'll start to go out into GP surgeries, and in some cases, they will go into the hands of the patient directly.
"And that's going to be make healthcare in the future look very different in that the patients will have much more information and it will alter the balance between the doctor and the patient."
He also spoke of how genetics - including a "brilliant" genetics research team in the North East - would also hopefully play a vital role. He said: "It'll be about getting your genetic profile, matching the treatment more accurately, and then hopefully, we're going to see some breakthroughs in in preventing disease through through that means as well."
Use of wearable tech such as Fitbits has already begun to play a role in monitoring of NHS patients and their vital signs, and the top medic thinks this will expand - and that the possibilities of big data could see huge developments. He said: "You're going to have millions and millions of data points and that gives you the opportunity to be able to much more accurately predict the course of somebody's illness.
"So for example, you can identify the characteristics of someone who's going to deteriorate quickly."
Throughout his career, Sir Liam has felt strongly about making public health a priority. This is something the Integrated Care Board has talked extensively about over the past year - with the North East's health "decades behind" other areas of the country according to some NHS reports. Sir Liam said tackling this was one of his main concerns.
He said: "We all worry that we haven't made major inroads into the long standing health inequalities in the in the region. When I first came in 1986 [to work at the then regional health authority] there wasn't any talk of public health. One of the things we tried to do there was to really get it on the map and show people that we really needed to look very hard at the causes of, of poor health compared to other parts of the country.
"And that is still problematic. Those inequalities are still there. And and we need to tackle them - and we need to look at 'the causes of the causes'. You've obviously got the things like smoking alcohol, excessive alcohol intake, obesity, but underlying that you've got more structural factors people's whether in work their level of income, families in poverty, lack of education opportunities."
Sir Liam said awareness of these issues was underpinning the ICB's work alongside local authorities to improve life in our region.
Looking ahead, he added: "I want to see us change things and show that we're changing things. There are all sorts of things at a population level, such as if we can simply get people moving more, help them to be more physically active. And then there's dealing with the still unacceptable level of tobacco-related diseases.
"And looking at the I'd like us to be in the forefront of, of all the innovations that that are possible in health care. And I'd like us not just to be first on some of them, but first to be second, if someone else has a brilliant idea, too."
