Meeting of the Parliament 13 March 2025
A generous four minutes. That is very kind of you. Thank you.
I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats in this important debate. I am grateful to Neil Gray and the Scottish Government for making time for the debate this afternoon.
Scotland has always been a nation of medical pioneers. From the discovery of penicillin to the invention of the hypodermic syringe, we have a proud history of innovation that has saved millions upon millions of lives. Although we are rightly proud of our history, we must not lose focus on where we are heading. It is clear that we need action, investment and leadership to drive the next generation of medical breakthroughs and reform a national health service that has been operating in crisis mode for years.
Scotland’s medical technology sector is thriving, with more than 250 companies employing more than 9,000 people. It is growing at an impressive 8 per cent a year, against market conditions that we know all too well. However, while the industry moves forward, our NHS remains stuck in the past. It is slow to adapt and is being held back by outdated systems that do not speak to each other and a Government that is too risk averse to embrace change. We should be leading the way, but instead we are still lagging behind.
That has not been helped by the UK Government’s cancellation of £500 million in AI research funding. If we want to move forward, we need to back innovation—not cut it off at the knees. AI is not just an idea for the future; it is delivering results today. For example, in Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust’s area, machine learning was used to cut did-not-attend rates and fill last-minute cancellation slots, thereby preventing nearly 600 wasted appointments in that small region of the country alone. Imagine what that could mean for the Scottish NHS: fewer missed appointments, shorter waiting lists, and more time spent giving patients the care that they deserve, in the time that they deserve to have it. We have already seen the potential. To give another example, the system developed through the GEMINI project—Grampian’s evaluation of Mia in an innovative national breast screening initiative—has boosted breast cancer detection rates by 10 per cent. Such technologies are already making a difference, and they are saving lives. We need to embrace them if we are to shift our NHS from being a reactive service that is constantly in crisis mode to a proactive one.
We also need to make NHS tech more robust across the board. Cyberattacks on our health service, particularly those carried out through ransomware, have cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds. A stronger, smarter electronic infrastructure would not only prevent such attacks but make the entire system more efficient and secure. I need not remind members that we live in an increasingly hostile world, where the online cyberlandscape is the new battlefield. New technologies present us with a real opportunity, and Liberal Democrats want to see us seizing that. To do so, we need real leadership.
Agreements such as those enabling the health and transformation partnership and the work of the accelerated national innovation adoption pathway are steps in the right direction. I am pleased that the Government is now considering that approach and taking it seriously.
I am also glad that, later this year, we will see the introduction of the NHS app, which we heard about earlier in the debate. Right now, our systems are outdated and rely on bits of paper. All members see that in our weekly surgeries. For example, I remember raising in the chamber the case of a woman who had been referred to the dental hospital with suspected mouth cancer. She presented me with a letter that had printed on it the date of its dictation, which was three months before the letter was typed up. We are still using technology from the 1970s. Those bits of paper are passed between patients and medical teams, getting lost on the way. Sometimes, for example, the use of a broken fax machine can mean patient care being delayed. That is right—a fax machine. The NHS must be the only arm of our public services that still uses those outdated and obsolete technologies. Patients and staff alike are fed up with the day-to-day friction that is caused by a startling lack of innovation. That is not the fault of our hard-working NHS practitioners or our care staff; it is just a constipation in the delivery of the technology.