The Government is to introduce 60 new goals that NHS hospitals and doctors are to be judged against in a move it hopes will save thousands of lives a year.

Benchmarks such as preventing unnecessary early deaths and improving the quality of life for people with long-term conditions will replace the target system introduced by Labour to assess the success of the NHS.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley says the benchmarks will “define what the NHS is setting out to achieve”.

The new system will focus on patients’ experience of the NHS – and not the speed of which they were treated – in an attempt to drive performance levels.

The use of comprehensive data on hospital death rates, the performances of GPs and surgeons and surveys from patients to gauge their satisfaction of the standard of care they received and their speed of recovery will all be analysed to assess whether benchmarks have been met. The views of bereaved relations and children for the first time will also be obtained as part of the Government’s plans.

“This is literally saying to patients ‘if you were in hospital, if you were being looked after by your general practitioner was the service and experience you had good or not?’” said Andrew Lansley. “It’s not like some other kinds of medical model where you kind of treat people and they get better. This is different. This is really where you begin to kind of focus on the experience of care.”

“We’ll be undertaking a consistent national survey of the bereaved relatives of people who received end of life care,” Mr Lansley said. “Asking them, after a suitable passage of time, what was their loved one’s experience of care and how well were they looked after towards the end of life.”

If the new standards are to be achieved, the Health Secretary believes that up to 24,000 early deaths a year could be prevented from cancer and other long-term conditions. Mr Lansley also hopes the new measures will increase access to NHS dentists and see fewer people with long-term conditions treated in hospitals. Patients undergoing routine hip and knee operations will no longer be left in pain or unable to walk, the Health Secretary pledged.

Mr Lansley said that his time as Health Secretary will not have been successful if the new benchmarks do not improve the NHS by the next general election.

“We have to clear the decks and be clear this is what we are focusing on,” he said. “People say in three and a half years’ time, in 2015, at the next election, how will we know whether you’ve succeeded or not? The answer is ‘have the outcomes improved? It will be my failure if we haven’t improved them and the NHS should feel that it has not succeeded, that is what we are setting out to do.

“We’ve really got to get into the big picture, which is delivering improvements in the results we achieve for patients right across the board. We know that we can do it.”

The Government will also publish current performance data for the first time for each of the benchmarks in an attempt, Ministers hope, will force up standards.

Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham said the new measures would not be received well by those working within the NHS. “Doctors and nurses will roll their eyes in sheer disbelief at this news,” he said.

“The Government that promised to scrap NHS targets now loads 60 new targets on an NHS already under severe pressure. It will add red tape and bureaucracy just as the NHS is struggling to cope with the financial challenge and the biggest reorganisation in its history.”

John Wilkinson (pictured), Chief Executive of Eucomed, has received a special Career award from the International Vascular and Endovascular Course (IVEC) in Milan.

The award recognises the medtech industry’s contribution to the development of vascular and endovascular surgery.

IVEC Chairman Giorgio Biasi presented the award to John Wilkinson to “honour the excellence of a distinguished scientist and eminent colleague who has contributed enormously in promoting, divulging and spreading culture, development and achievements in the field of vascular and endovascular techniques.”

Following the award presentation, Wilkinson gave the Edmondo Malan Lecture on ‘Development and Achievements in Endovascular Procedures as a Result of a Continuous and Ingenious Co-operation between Physicians and Industry’.

He discussed the long history of collaborative working between clinicians and industry over 200 years, with ideas from doctors and surgeons being developed by companies, culminating in such revolutionary devices as the drug-eluting stent.

Wilkinson also emphasised the need for innovation to be built on a platform of ethical interaction and transparency, and for industry to support education and training in the delivery of new therapies.

Finally, he drew attention to the demographic and economic challenges facing Europe’s health systems, and called for a collaborative approach between all stakeholders to support innovative solutions to these urgent problems.

Eucomed is the leading European medical technology industry association. It represents 4,500 designers, manufacturers and suppliers of medical technologies.

Two new endoscopic devices launched in the UK promise to improve the success of surgery for treatment of chronic sinusitis.

The Cyclops Multi-Angle Endoscope and Relieva Luma Sentry Sinus Illumination System (pictured) from US company Acclarent give surgeons an enhanced field of view when navigating the sinus.

The sinuses are narrow and tortuous air spaces that can easily be blocked by minor inflammation. Sinusitis affects some 9 million people in the UK, with symptoms including headaches, facial pain, nasal blockage, toothache and fatigue.

The new Acclarent endoscopic devices enable the surgeon to see the natural opening of the sinuses directly, examining many angles with one scope.

These products add to the company’s Balloon Sinuplasty treatment platform, in which a tiny balloon is guided into the sinuses to help blockages.

Since its launch in 2005, more than 120,000 patients worldwide have been treated with Balloon Sinuplasty.

Based in California, Acclarent specialises in products for ENT surgery. The company is a business unit of Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson company.

A convenient oral treatment patients can take at home to prevent venous thromboembolic events (VTE) following elective total hip or knee replacement surgery is now available in the UK.

Eliquis (apixaban) has been launched through a collaboration between Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer and could help prevent up to 25,000 deaths each year resulting from blood clots.

Dr Ander Cohen, Honorary Consultant Vascular Physician at King's College Hospital, London, says the treatment “represents a new option” for surgeons in the UK.

VTE can lead to two serious conditions: deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism which can lead to death if not treated.

The license of Eliquis is based on the ADVANCE-2 and ADVANCE-3 clinical trials in patients who underwent elective total hip or knee replacements. More than 8,000 patients were assessed during the trials which assessed the efficacy in preventing blood clots and death, and bleeding risk of Eliquis when compared to enoxaparin.

“Clinical data showed that apixaban was more effective than the anticoagulant enoxaparin and importantly, it also showed no increase in bleeding rates compared to enoxaparin,” said Dr Cohen.

Dr Rick Lones, UK Executive Medical Director, BMS, said the two companies “hope to reduce the burden of blood clots” in patients undergoing major surgery after the drug’s release in the UK.

A diagnostic screening kit that measures platelet function at the point of care is being used to assess the need need for blood products and drugs in patients who bleed post-operatively.

Surgeons and anaesthetists at the Lancashire Cardiac Centre in Blackpool Victoria Hospital are using Plateletworks from HORIBA Medical as a rapid test of whether patients have enough functioning platelets to allow haemostasis.

The Plateletworks kit delivers quantitative and qualitative platelet assessments in minutes, enabling clinicians to make informed decisions at the point of care.

The kit is also enabling clinicians at the Centre to swiftly assess patients on anti-platelet therapy (such as Clopidogrel) who require urgent surgery, so that they can be operated on at the earliest safe opportunity.

Plateletworks is also being used to evaluate new techniques, such as optimisation of the perfusion process to reduce platelet loss and hence need for transfusion.

Whole blood samples can be used with the kit, saving time in sample preparation. The tests can be processed on a HORIBA Medical haematology analyser in less than five minutes.

“By using Plateletworks to rapidly assess platelet function we have noted a reduction in post-operative bleeding take backs,” said Mr Nidal Bittar, consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Centre.

“We have also been able to improve a patient’s journey, since we can address the cause of bleeding quickly without delay and we need only transfuse if absolutely necessary.

“Furthermore, we can protect low responders to anti-platelet therapy from risk of embolus during stent insertion procedures, for example.”

HORIBA Medical UK specialises in automated in vitro diagnostic systems for haematology, with a clinical support network of 31 professionals.