The chairman of an award-winning tech company has said the US is more open to adopting new technology at scale than the UK.
That’s the view of Glenn Cooper, chairman of St Helens-based Inovus Medical, when he spoke at pro-manchester’s latest HealthTech conference.
Founded in 2012 by Dr Elliot Street and Jordan van Flute, Inovus is on a mission to become the world’s partner for surgical training and recently secured major partnerships with AAGL and Hologic Inc.
Cooper said: “There’s a much more open discussion and adoption of our technology in the US than the UK.
“The big tech companies are leading the way. They’re so open about the new technology – as long as you deliver.
“The message we’re trying to get across is we have a track record of delivering and we’re not doing this by remote control from the UK. We’re invested in the US with American solutions.
“It’s 45 per cent of the global market. It is the most important market by size.”
Cooper took part in a panel discussion hosted by BusinessCloud executive editor Chris Maguire.
He was joined by Leontina Postelnicu, policy and public affairs lead at Feebris, who said: “There’s still a lot to be done around improving awareness and understanding around digital health technology.”
Lauren Bevan, director of consulting at Ethical Healthcare Consulting, said the health sector’s adoption of technology had slowed since the Covid pandemic.
“The urgency isn’t there to be able to put new things in,” she said. “The pace has changed and there’s still sustained pressure in the system. Managers and teams are still struggling to manage backlogs. What we’re also seeing is people are less willing to take risks.”
She predicted the forthcoming general election would have a significant impact on the NHS.
“If there’s a change in government I would say the change would be different,” she said. “I think they (Labour) will be focussing on different priorities.
“I think that will be about getting the basics right and getting things to deliver rather than newsworthy headlines about attention-grabbing things like AI.
“Hopefully there will be more attention to what trusts and systems are asking for rather than what feels like their vote-grabbing headlines.”
The final member of the panel was Jon Pickering, CEO of electronic document management specialist Mizaic.
He said: “The future for us is about disrupting the whole way in which people have been thinking about paper medical records for lots of years and digitalising it as quickly as possible to make that data of use for clinicians.”
Mizaic is currently helping digitise the medical records of 10 per cent of acute hospitals in the UK but Pickering said they wanted to increase this number.
“You can archive it (paper-based medical records) or you can make it of use to the clinician,” he said. “We make it of use to the clinician.”