UK On Cusp Of Value-Based Procurement With NHS Future Operating Model Going Live

The UK's National Health Service Supply Chain contract ended andproposals from a government reviewto reduce cost variation in NHS England's secondary care setting signaled a need to rethink the complex and costly NHS procurement methods for medical technology. The plan that emerged, the Future Operating Model, is designed to save NHS money annually, but not in the transactional sense. Instead, it deploys value-based health-care concepts that are designed to yield sustainable benefits for patients, as well as the payer and provider. Also see "UK Outlook 2018: Medtech Readies For Change To FOM System Of Value-Based Procurement" - Medtech Insight, 8 February, 2018.

FOM was the focus of an event hosted by the Association of British Healthcare Industries, the UK medtech industry association, in London on March 20. It was, as ABHI Chief Operating Officer Nishan Sunthares explained, the first ABHI procurement meeting in the past five years. But no better time to host another, given the huge changes coming. (See box, "UK FOM Go-Live Dates.") Not that much change will be evident immediately after May 8, the day when the six medical procurement "Category Towers" set up under the FOM will go live