Al could be silver bullet for future of our NHS

Spiralling costs, low staff morale and long waiting lists but London’s medical director Chris Streather tells Alexandra Jones why he is optimistic about our health service

- Alexandra Jones

I TRIED to give my best blue steel," says Dr Chris Streather, London's NHS medical director. "I'm more comfortable with a goofy smile." An affable optimist, Streather rose to one of the top roles in London's NHS in 2022. Now he oversees future clinical strategy for our city, part of a leadership team (he reports directly to London NHS director Caroline Clarke) that is responsible for the health of 10 million Londoners - a fact which sounds terrifying, but which Streather assures me "is a huge privilege, honestly."

It's an interesting time to be meeting Streather - there's a level of doublethink at play when it comes to the public's attitudes towards the NHS. A recent poll by think-tank The Health Foundation found that 'the health service makes more people proud to be British than our history, our culture, our system of democracy or the royal family' and that this pride comes down in part to the fact that it remains free at the point of access but also because of the quality of the care that patients receive.

At the same time, though - and over the past few weeks in particular- everyfrom Tony Blair to former health secretary Sajid Javid has been lining up to give the NHS a kicking. "The entire British state is on the verge of becoming a subsidiary of the NHS," said Javid, referring to the Institute for Fiscal Studies' warning that "health spending is set to account for 44% of total day-to-day public service spending". Indeed, with 7.4 million people on waiting lists and 110,000 staff vacancies, the statistics seem to point to a sprawling and bloated system that's failing both its workforce and its users.