'Redesign healthcare delivery or risk investment'

Much of the new cash investment in the NHS could be 'ineffective'unless research is undertaken into how best to redesign healthcare delivery around the patient, a paper from Brunel University advises.Launching a series of guidelines to improve patient care, Professor Terry Young from the university's department of information systems said more work should be done to investigate changing the delivery of healthcare to support government and NHS initiatives.He also recommends research into 'strategic and radical'ways of implementing industrial approaches to healthcare delivery, to go alongside 'evolutionary routes'currently being explored.And he queries the use of 'batch-and-queue'systems in which patients are batched for clinics, operations or consultations where 'waiting is inevitable'.

terry. young@brunel. ac. uk