Lord Darzi: Tech and global collaboration could save the NHS’s ‘critical condition’
The NHS is in ‘critical condition’ and in urgent need of reform, but technology and international partnerships, particularly with India, could hold the key to its recovery, said Lord Ara Darzi.
“We have a lot to learn from our colleagues in India”, Darzi announced on Thursday at the India Global Forum. “They’ve done some really transformative things which could be extremely useful if we embrace them in the UK”.
“Healthcare is the one area in which plagirism doesn’t matter. Go out there and copy the best, and bring it back”, he added.
His comments follow a damning review he wrote in September 2024, which found that the NHS was bucking under the weight of soaring demand, low productivity, poor morale and years of persistent underfunding.
“The NHS is in a critical condition”, he wrote at the time, “but the vital signs are still stable – though not for long”.
A baseline for reform – ‘numbers don’t lie’
Darzi’s landmark report, commissioned by the UK government, analysed health outcomes for over 61m patients across 24 years – the most comprehensive health data reciew in NHS history.
“I wasn’t waiting for a phone call to do this”, he said at Thursday’s event, “but I was convienced the NHS needed a baseline. If you know the facts, then at least you can plan for a better future”.
The findings “shocked” him, he repeated. Critical performance failures, delayed diagnoses and worsening public health outcomes across the board.
Prime minister Keir Starmer echoed this concern at the time of the report, saying: “It’s not just the state of our National Health Service in crisis – it’s also the state of our national health”.
India’s tech-first model and AI
Darzi praised India’s healthcare system for combing both scale and innovation – from specialist hospitals like Narayana, he said, to world-leading eye centres.
He also lauded the country’s global role in vaccine production.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, India’s contribution was enormous”, he said. “It wasn’t just the Serum Institue’s vaccines. It was entire infrastructure that was mobilitsed, which showed it’s power – both intellectual and production capacity”.
He argued that the same model – decentralised, tech-enabled and built for efficiency – could inform the UK’s future.
AI has already begun reshaping parts of the NHS.
London-based Behold AI claimed it can analuse chest X-rays for signs of lung cancer in under seven seconds, for example, detecting 22,000 more cases a year, while easing pressure on radiologists.
“It always saves money”, chief executive Simon Rasalingham told Morning Wire at the time of Darzi’s report. “The NHS is struggling with funding. There’s no golden bullet, so saving money is crucial”.
Spending £10bn a year on the sector, it’s no surprise that the NHS is the UK’s biggest healthtech buyer – and the budget increased after the Chancellor’s announcement in the Spending Review that NHS funding will rise by three per cent per year.
But, founders say scaling innovation across the NHS remains a major challenge due to legacy systems, procurement issues and entrenched bureaucracy too.
“Interoperability is the biggest thing holding back innovation”, said Tom Whicher, chief executive of appointment booking app DrDoctor.
Whilst government plans to increase investment in NHS clinics are a positive step, industry leaders say that part of that funding must increasingly go to overhauling how this broken system works.
Global collaboration
Darzi stressed that any meaningful recovery for the NHS would hinge not just on technology – but also on learning from global partners.
“Innovation doesn’t respect borders”, he announced to the India Global Forum. “If we can adopt some of the incredible advances we’ve seen in India – in digital diagnostics, service delivery and AI, and bring them home – we may just get ahead of the crisis.”
Wirh a new 10-year NHS reform plan under way, Darzi remained bullish that the NHS can be fixed.
He announced: “If we undergo three major shifts: hosptial to community, treatment to prevention and analog to digital, and do it with partnerships globally, I think we probably have a better change of a whole system transformation”.