Homepage Key Themes
KEY THEMES
With equal focus on imaging, endoscopy, pathology and physiological sciences, the Forum is your one-stop destination for shaping the future of diagnostic service delivery across ICSs, neighbourhoods, and local health economies. In 2027, discussions will centre on:
- Turning investment into impact: demonstrating measurable returns from Community Diagnostic Centres, networks and digital infrastructure as capital funding tightens and scrutiny of public spending intensifies.
- Delivering the Carter Review: what its recommendations mean in practice for pathology networks, from consolidation and LIMS convergence to specimen tracking and network-wide standardisation.
- Building diagnostics around neighbourhood health: moving beyond CDCs as buildings towards services genuinely designed around the patient, and aligning programmes currently commissioned in isolation.
- Managing demand, not just building capacity: clinical decision support, referral optimisation and appropriateness, and whether new capacity simply generates more demand.
- Growing the workforce when systems are already at headcount: skill-mix innovation, task-shifting, training pipelines, and the productivity gains available before any new technology is introduced.
- Realising the benefits of digital and AI: from deployment evidence beyond the pilot stage to the interoperable infrastructure that determines whether any of it delivers.