Keeping up Standards In Healthtech (OHT Midlands)

In a world where nothing seems certain, technology standards can provide us (or at least the nerdiest among us!) with stability - facilitating safe development and effective collaboration. Despite being a vital part of assuring high quality digital health products and services, they’re not always given the leading role in policy and decision making they deserve. We’ve therefore asked some incredible speakers to join us for a cross-sector discussion on why standards are key to catalysing healthy innovation, what we should prioritise and how we can drive their adoption across the digital health system. 

We have the pleasure of being joined by Xiao Liu, Clinical Research Fellow at University Hospitals Birmingham and driving force behind the standardisation of AI and health research via SPIRIT-AI and CONSORT-AI, Jeanette Kusel, Director of NICE Scientific Advice and Ira Bolychevsky, the NHSX Director of Standards & Interoperability. This is designed to be a ‘community hangout’ (with some help from your friendly comperes!): we'll hear short provocations from our speakers before having a group discussion around key questions. 

The purpose is to network with like-minded individuals interested in standards and standardisation, and to learn how diverse areas of health technology, across research, policy and the NHS, think about and approach standards. 

Agenda

17:30 Welcome from OHT & Intros - Maxine Mackintosh, OHT

17:45 Speaker intros - Hosted by Lisa Murphy, OHT

18:00 Group discussions

18:50 Speaker takeaways

19:00 Close

Some of the  questions we plan to cover in the group discussions include: 

• Why standards should be a focus for the health tech community
• What are 'quick wins' or low hanging fruit that would have a big impact
•  How do we develop standards: is there a 'best practice' approach for this? how do we prioritise which standards should be developed?
• How do we incentivise the adoption of standards: what are the facilitative factors to ensure adoption? how does this differ from a national to an international context?
• How do we know if our standards are effective: how do we assess their impact, particularly on patient care and health outcomes?

The format will be that our three speakers will give their take based on their research, regulatory and NHS perspective before opening up for an informal group discussion. 

We welcome those who are new to the world of standards to those whose have FIHR as their mother tongue - we know these are complex and technical topics, and rest assured we don't intend to shy away from the detail!

AND to get our creative juices flowing, every attendee needs to bring with them a standard, either one they love, one they've heard about, one they know is important but don't have the foggiest what it means. It's just your standard show & tell really....