The Age of Change with Jeremy Hunt, in Partnership with IBM

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Margarita Valpado (1:03)

Change has always been a constant, but today the speed and scale of technological transformations are testing our ability to keep pace. As AI and automation become embedded in the way we work, deliver healthcare and run our institutions, the question is no longer simply what these technologies can do.

It is how we adapt to them, while building organizations and societies that are more resilient, more productive, and still fundamentally human. Because in an age of accelerating innovation, resilience cannot be something we reach for only in moments of crisis. It has to be built into the way we change. Hello and welcome to The Age to Come, brought to you by Intelligence Squared in partnership with IBM. I'm Senior Producer, Margarita Valpado. Throughout this year-long program, we are exploring how new technologies will reshape human experiences over the arc of a lifetime.

You're about to hear the latest of these conversations recorded live in London. Journalist Kamal Ahmed was joined by former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, Dr. Angela Spatharou, Senior Partner and EMEA Leader for Healthcare and Life Sciences at IBM Consulting, and Lawrence Tallon, Chief Executive of Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Together, they explore what it takes to adapt when technological change becomes constant and how we can embrace innovation while keeping people at the center of it. Let's join Kamal, Jeremy, Angela, and Lawrence now with more.

Kamal Ahmed (2:41)

Before we just start, I want to give you a quote from a Roger Sherman. Now, Roger Sherman, he was a hospital CAO at Akron Children's Hospital in Ohio. If we can mechanize much of this routine work, our doctors and nurses will be able to spend more of their time using their professional training to give more direct and attentive care to patients.

Now, Lawrence, when do you think Roger Sherman said that?

Lawrence Tallon (3:09)

Oh, I'm going to say 1932 or something.

Kamal Ahmed (3:14)

Uh, Angela?

Angela Spatharou (3:15)

1961

Kamal Ahmed (3:16)

Jeremy?

Jeremy Hunt (3:17)

1935

Kamal Ahmed (3:18)

1962 You get the prize, Angela. Congratulations, because actually he was talking about the rollout of the first ever electronic healthcare records by a company that was called International Business Machines Corporation, IBM. Who knew in my research that I would come across that? So, Angela, well done for knowing your IBM history. That's very, very smart. But the point I want to make from that is, and Jeremy, let me start with you.

The health service has been talking forever about how technology help. How is this different?

Jeremy Hunt (3:57)

Well, it's different for lots of reasons, but one of them is that contrary to what lots of people think about the NHS, I mean, our image, I mean, look, when I was Health Secretary, I got some things right, I got some things wrong. But one thing I got very badly wrong was that there were never anything but negative headlines about the NHS. So most of the time I was there, particularly during the junior doctor's strike. So British people have this image of the NHS as really trailing. There are lots of areas, don't get me wrong, where the NHS does trail other similar countries and we're right to debate those.

But actually, when it comes to AI and tech, this is an area where the NHS, perhaps to some people's surprise, is very much in the top tier of global health systems. I think it's something that I would love to take credit for it, but actually part of it, I mean, Mark Davis is a GP will know this. But part of this dates back to the total stropiness of GPs and the GP community in the 2000s, when Tony Blair set up this project called Connecting for Health, and the GP said, we don't want anything to do with this.