So here is - an attempt at least - at sorting out the NHS

This may work, it may not, but it is at least an attempt to sort out the actual problem:

Robots will be deployed to help clear NHS waiting lists and decide who gets seen first.

Pilot schemes have begun using automated calls to assess patients waiting for operations and prioritise their urgency.

One major company said the NHS is now looking to use automatisation in about 100 areas, including helping to clear backlogs and speed up the handling of referrals.

As we’ve pointed out before a standard claim about the NHS is that it has a different inflation rate than the rest of the country - than the rest of the world perhaps. This is because the NHS is less good at increasing productivity than the rest of the country - the world perhaps.

As we’ve also pointed out before the solution to this is to apply extra effort to improving productivity in the NHS. As is well known it is competition and the markets which generate the competition which improve productivity. So, more markets and competition to make the NHS better.

The act, rather than the process, is that very automation above. Yes, services find it much more difficult to increase productivity than manufactures (thank you, Dr. Baumol). The answer is, where possible, to turn a service into a manufacture at which point productivity improvement becomes easier. Robots and ‘bots (the latter usually referring to software, the former to physical machines) are one of those acts of automation. As was - in our oft-used example - aspirin, which automated the previously used comely maiden wiping fevered brows with a cool damp cloth.

So, full marks to the act being attempted here. To increase NHS productivity by automating more of it. We do though need to still keep ahold of the other point. That the system which increases the number of such attempted acts is markets and competition. So, we need more of those to encourage more such acts.

There is another issue of course. Which is that it’s only competition - attempting the same task in different ways at the same time - which allows us to work out which method works better. We automate one part of the NHS in one particular manner, measure that against the parts unreformed and then decide whether it’s a good idea or not. For experimentation is competition, isn’t it?