A renewed attempt to encourage the NHS to expand abroad is to be launched by the Department of Health and UK Trade and Investment. Ministers believe that the reputation of hospitals such as Great Ormond Street, the Royal Marsden, and Moorfields Eye Hospital is such that overseas branches, funded through private income or joint ventures, could generate profits to reinvest in the NHS.

Some overseas projects already exist—Moorfields has established a unit in Dubai,1 for example, but a new (and so far unpublished) report, Healthcare UK: Excellence through Partnership, believes there is much more to be done. Lord Howe, the health minister, told the Independent: “It’s about the NHS ethos in a different culture.” Preliminary work overseas “has convinced us that this is a model that will fly. We think this …