The Biggest Wins In The NHS Are Cheap! - Chewing It Over with Luke Kellaway

In this episode of Chewing It Over, Jack speaks with Luke Kellaway about his MSKMag article, The Biggest Wins in the NHS Are Cheap, exploring whether healthcare innovation has become too focused on expensive technology at the expense of simpler solutions that already work.

Luke highlights the enormous burden musculoskeletal conditions place on the NHS and argues that relatively inexpensive initiatives can produce substantial improvements in waiting lists, patient outcomes and service efficiency. Yet these less glamorous interventions can struggle to attract the attention given to AI and digital health pilots.

The conversation questions what healthcare actually means by efficiency. Saving clinicians time with technology sounds valuable, but if that additional capacity simply allows more patients to enter an already constrained pathway, it may increase spending rather than reduce it. Improving one part of a system also achieves little if patients simply reach the next bottleneck faster.

Jack and Luke discuss the importance of examining and redesigning clinical workflows before adding technology. Rather than assuming AI will fix inefficient systems, organisations should first understand where delays occur, streamline existing processes and then identify where technology genuinely adds value.

They also explore the challenges surrounding healthcare AI, procurement and medical-device regulation. As increasingly sophisticated technology enters clinical practice, both managers and clinicians need enough digital literacy to question how these systems work, whether they are appropriately regulated and what they mean for patient safety.

Ultimately, the discussion makes the case for pragmatic innovation: empower clinicians, improve pathways, scale interventions that already work and introduce technology where it solves a clearly defined problem—not simply because it is new.