Rediscovering GP innovation with Professor George Crooks

About this episode

Professor George Crooks discusses the evolution of GP practices and the role of technology in modern healthcare.

In this episode, we speak with Professor George Crooks OBE, Chief Executive of Scotland's Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre and a former GP of 23 years in Aberdeen. He reflects on changes over the years and how the quiet disappearance of proactive home visiting in general practice has contributed to some of today's system pressures, and argues that technology - from passive monitoring to citizen data access - can help restore some of what was lost. He offers a measured take on AI in healthcare, warning against off-the-shelf clinical AI trained on unrepresentative datasets, while advocating for its immediate use in administrative tasks and patient-facing data tools. We discuss the barriers holding back innovation in Scottish healthcare. Prof Crooks is forthright about information governance being "an absolute nightmare of our own making" and describes a system where excessive layers of risk-averse governance have become a disabler rather than an enabler. He introduces the idea of innovation as a three-legged stool - technical, service, and commercial - and explains why neglecting any one leg leads to failure. He closes with a frank assessment of Scotland's international…

People in this episode

Guest: Professor George Crooks OBE

Topics covered

• GP innovation
• digital health
• healthcare technology
• AI in healthcare
• information governance
• Scottish healthcare

Keywords

• GP innovation
• digital health
• AI in healthcare
• information governance
• Scottish healthcare
• home visiting
• citizen data access

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Scotland's Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre, Digital Health and Care Scotland, DHI Scotland

Places: Scotland, Aberdeen

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