In response to the plan published by Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, Wes Streeting, at the end of last week, Sepsis Research FEAT medical director Dr Andrew Conway Morris commented:
Sepsis Research FEAT welcomes the government’s 10 year plan for the NHS in England, and looks forward to hearing how this will interact with plans for the devolved nations.
The plan has a major emphasis on research and innovation. As a medical research charity, we agree that this will be central to advancing the care of patients within the NHS. We specifically welcome the focus on health data availability and genomics: understanding the epidemiology of sepsis and the role of genetic predispositions are crucial to the sepsis research priorities established by this charity in 2023/24. We also welcome the ambition to increase the number of clinical trials being undertaken by the NHS and to translate innovations into practice. We note the specific mention of rapid diagnostics in infection and look forward to seeing further developments in this field.
All of these will be warm words, however, without the funding and resources to support their implementation. Research requires the infrastructure of research nurses, investigators and data analysts – irrespective of whether it is funded by public, charitable or commercial funders – and this infrastructure needs investment and support. Adequate funding needs to be provided to public research funders to enable the many innovative ideas coming from UK researchers to be explored; too many great ideas in sepsis research remain unexamined due to the highly constrained nature of research funding.
On the NHS more widely, Sepsis Research FEAT acknowledges the desire to move to a more community-based and preventative healthcare service. These are admirable aims, and the emphasis on vaccination and reduction in antimicrobial resistant infections will be critical to preventing sepsis. However, such changes must not be at the cost of acute care when it is needed. Patients who become acutely and critically unwell must be assured of the availability of high-quality, life-saving care where and when they need it, and this will almost always be in the context of hospital care. We welcome the emphasis on rehabilitation and getting patients out of hospital once they have recovered from an acute illness, but again this requires appropriate resources and the ability to tailor rehabilitation to the patient’s needs. Sepsis survivors often experience a lack of joined-up care, and a limited range of evidence-based interventions as they seek to rehabilitate and this requires both research and clinical service investment to improve outcomes and rebuild lives.
The NHS plan contains a large amount of detail. How it is implemented will be critical to its ambition of creating a healthier, wealthier nation. Sepsis Research FEAT will continue to digest the plan and monitor its implementation, arguing for the highest quality, most innovative care for patients experiencing sepsis and living with the after-effects.
You can read the full plan here