Leading doctor slams 'one-size-fits-all' NHS

BRITAIN'S "monochrome" health system is in urgent need of a revolution in the way it treats patients.

- By Lucy Johnston SOCIAL AFFAIRS EDITOR

This is the stark message from Dr Michael Dixon, chair of the College of Medicine, who declared that the age of "one-size-fits-all" treatment must end.

The leading NHS doctor called for a switch to personal medicine — a radical, individualised approach to health that puts patients at the centre of their own care.

"Medicine must now become ever more relevant," he told delegates at last week's Personal and Integrative Medicine Congress in central London.

"Otherwise, how are we going to meet the most urgent challenges of our time?"

Those challenges, he said, include spiralling obesity, mental health crises and soaring rates of chronic illness.

"Life expectancy has plateaued and is now falling for the less well-off," he said. "Forty per cent of 11-year-olds in London are overweight or obese, one in five people are on antidepressants and a quarter of young girls are self-harming. We are facing a tsunami of dementia."