Are more beds really enough?

Did you catch the new big plan to tackle NHS wait lists today?

Five thousand more beds, 800 new ambulances, a £1bn investment overall.

Who exactly is going to staff all those new resources is another question that remains unanswered – but amid the new information announced, we spotted something a whole lot more practical and promising:

“The creation of virtual wards where patients with conditions such as heart failure receive expert care in their own home via digital technologies”.

Now we’re talking.

Over the last few years, we’ve helped medical manufacturers innovate some truly transformative technologies that are already serving to reduce wait times in certain areas of the NHS.

Like the compact, at-home dialysis machine Quanta SC+, which allows patients to receive their treatment with maximum comfort and control.

Or the QuickCheck device which detects dangerous levels of tissue inflammation in peritonitis patients – not just quickly, but 10,000 times faster than laboratory testing.

By applying a customer-centric strategic design approach to innovation, these medical manufacturers are creating some truly remarkable technologies that could just be the crucial answer to the NHS’s biggest problems.

If you’ve got a medical innovation in mind and you want to go into it safe in the knowledge that it won’t just work commercially, it’ll genuinely change lives too – get in touch. design@smallfry.com

Let’s change the face of at-home care.