IPEM Launches Key Asks for the Next Government

Ahead of the General Election on 4th July, IPEM has launched its key asks of the next Government to support the MPCE community. These build on the work of the Science Leadership Strategy, developed last year, and have been created with input from many IPEM members.

IPEM calls on the next Government to:

• Address the workforce crisis in Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering by investing in more trained MPCE staff and more training places, including wider access to apprenticeships and improving the provision of education in STEM subjects, and tackling the chronic shortage of physics teachers in UK secondary schools.
• Introduce regulations to move the registration of Clinical Technologists onto a statutory footing to regulate them in the same was as other professionals such as Radiographers, providing greater public reassurance, giving the NHS more flexibility in the use of its workforce and improving patient care.
• Create the capacity for the UK to generate its own medical radioisotopes for domestic use and export, by backing the Advanced Radioisotope Technology for Health Utility Reactor (ARTHUR) project and working in partnership with the Welsh Government to deliver this.
• Ensure AI is deployed in the interests of patients and led by healthcare professionals, with AI-specific standards to ensure safe, effective and ethical development and clinical use, and investment to develop and embed next generation digital skills.
• Promote environmental sustainability in healthcare by supporting Greener NHS, and other initiatives across the UK that promote the transition to a net zero NHS, without compromising patient care or an already overstretched workforce. Use government policies to encourage all actors in this field (including equipment manufacturers, the academic sector, and the private healthcare sector) to move meaningfully towards sustainability targets consistent with the UK Climate Change Act, and the tenets of Greener NHS.
• Invest for the long term, especially in significant life saving equipment such as linear accelerators, MRI scanners and other items, to reduce the carbon footprint of replacing them avoidably early, and in the skilled professionals that can operate them safely and efficiently.

The six headline asks will be followed, in the next few weeks, by a fuller IPEM manifesto setting out the background to each of the asks, with more detail of how they can be achieved. This longer document will be sent to all new Ministers, Shadow Ministers and all newly elected MPs after the election.

IPEM's manifesto builds on its ongoing public affairs work, which has recently seen a series of questions about medical physics and clinical engineering asked in Parliament and engagement with the Government around promoting apprenticeships to aid recruitment.