Tesco ‘is better at technology than the NHS’

THE NHS must become more like Tesco and embrace technology to save lives, the Health Secretary has said.

Matt Hancock admitted the supermarket giant has ‘more sophisticated’ systems to understand and cater for customers than the NHS uses to care for patients. The chain uses tools such as loyalty cards to harness data – recording what shoppers are buying and allowing supermarkets to tailor their services accordingly.

At yesterday’s launch of the Topol review, an official report on the digital future of the health service, Mr Hancock said: ‘We want to harness the power of technology … to deliver better for the NHS and to save lives.

‘Right now Tesco has a more efficient technological system than the NHS. We don’t use common identifiers to identify patients. We don’t know which hospital a patient has been to; we don’t know which medicines have been put into them. We don’t even record what devices are put into people. We don’t even know what we already know.’

Mr Hancock added: ‘If Tesco can do this with groceries, by God, we need to do it with lifesaving operations for the NHS.’