The Cumberland Initiative aims to transform the quality and cost of NHS care delivery through simulation, modelling and systems thinking.

We believe that transforming the quality of care through radically better processes and systems will save money through step changes in provision that also produce much better outcomes. These savings should dwarf those available through better selection of drugs or technology alone and the impact should readily exceed 10 per cent of the total NHS budget.

Our vision – unprecedented savings with re-investment in improved outcomes – is now the Government’s policy. It has challenged the NHS to achieve efficiency savings on a scale never before seen here, or indeed in other countries. (House of Commons Health Select Committee, December 2010)

The Government’s challenge calls for radical rethinking. It requires systematic remodelling of processes for every care pathway, at policy, commissioning and operational levels.

We appreciate the difficulty of that task – the NHS cannot stop work until we get everything right, central direction would be stifling and patients are not commodities. However, modelling and simulation offer tremendous benefits.

Many tools are already available to help staff operate and deploy resources much more effectively. Britain has great academic strength in this field to support the clinical leadership required to drive such change.

A stretching target is our 20:20 Vision. We aim to deliver an extra million quality adjusted life years (QALYs) from the current £100 billion spent annually on the NHS (an extra £20 billion of value from existing expenditure at £20,000/QALY). Additionally, we would hope to save 20 per cent of the current annual NHS budget: £20 billion.

As in other industries, we believe that quality and capacity in healthcare can be transformed through radically remodelled processes and systems. This will deliver improvements in patient care and the type of extraordinary savings envisaged by the Government.