The 10-Year Health Plan makes up to 80 references to artificial intelligence and clinical research. Yet it is completely silent on the role and value of the doctors who often lead such research – medical academics.
This should worry us all. Patients, and colleagues, have the right to ensure that the innovations outlined in the plan (from genomic screening to commercial clinical trials in primary care) are backed by the doctors with the right skills, experience, and knowledge behind them. Rolling out these advances without acknowledging the doctors needed to provide safe oversight of these technologies is staggering.
The plan regularly speaks of the need to get the basics right. But the basic fact is that substituting doctors to lead research will not result in a safer, or smarter, system. The plan commits to expanding academic roles among other healthcare professionals, but neglects to mention the medical workforce even once.
This omission matters. The latest data from the Medical Schools Council staffing survey reveals the extent of the crisis in our workforce. Academics consist of just 3.4% of all consultants across the UK, down from 4.7% in 2009. Nearly two thirds of professors are nearing retirement. And at the other end of the pipeline, early career roles are vanishing – with a 29% decrease in medical academics aged under 36 since 2015.
We are also concerned about whether the plan’s proposed shift to a more community-based service also assumes that education, training and research activities will move. Given that these aspects of secondary care are in desperate straits this will require new money. Will that be provided? And will the Department of Health and Social Care ensure that doctors have time for these activities, rather than be expected to do them in their own time?
At the moment we are haemorrhaging the next generation of doctor educators, researchers, and innovators. The lack of our highly skilled medical academic workforce will mean that industry, patients, and colleagues (of every branch of practice) will not be provided with the confidence required to put their trust in this blueprint.
Doctors must continue to have a critical role in leading research. Without workforce planning, and additional funding to support access to academic roles for all doctors, research is doomed to remain ‘nice to have’ – rather than a core activity – across the NHS in England.
Read more: The UK is rapidly losing medical academics and without them the NHS 10 year plan is at risk