BCS responds to Information Revolution plans

BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, has submitted a response to the NHS Information Revolution consultation, following David Cameron's announcement yesterday on the NHS reforms.

The institute undertook an internal consultation amongst its members.Dr Justin Whatling, vice chair for strategy and policy in BCS Health, who has led the response, said: "Our members were keen to bring their expertise to bear on a holistic approach to the challenges that face informatics in the health industry. We have, therefore, written a comprehensive response in nine chapters that we believe provides detailed, progressive and pragmatic guidance to the NHS as it now puts in place its information strategy."

The full report, consisting of almost 100 recommendations, will be available later this month. In the meantime, some of the recommendations include:

• We recommend that, where sharing is appropriate, there should be a statutory obligation on health care providers to release information as a minimum standard if contracting with the NHS.
• To mitigate the risk that, in the early stages of data release, organisations, clinical teams and individuals will be unfairly judged by inappropriate interpretation of data that is not fully explained, we recommend that ministers, the Department of Health and commissioners will need to take a mature attitude in responding to data release and be at the forefront of explaining to the public and the media why over-reaction is inappropriate, though this will not be easy.
• We recommend a single overarching approvals and/or assurance body for informatics standards, directed by the Secretary of State for Health, covering health, social care and population health. The role should include rapidly setting standards with roadmap for information management that are stable, enabling ICT suppliers to rapidly innovate solutions for health and care.
• We recommend that existing NHS procurement frameworks such as ASCC are enhanced so that new vendors can be added to the framework if they demonstrate a product meets the national minimum requirements for information governance, functionality, data standards and interoperability, or removed if they are subsequently seen to fall below those standards.
• We recommend that the information strategy states that all organisations providing care to the NHS should be given notice that they will be expected to be using an electronic patient record (EPR) in a meaningful way within five years. Following review of the US criteria for meaningful use, the NHS should create a set that is appropriate to the UK.

This joins a long list of responses to the consultation by organisations such as the NHS Alliance, which raised concerns over funding, strategy and staff, and the BMA, which warned that plans will be difficult to achieve given the financial constraints of the NHS.

In addition, the NHS has been criticised for wasting vast amounts of money each year on procurement. Earlier this month, John Neilson, managing director of NHS Shared Business Services, highlighted that the health service currently wastes more than £1 billion a year by not effectively managing procurement.  

Following Neilson's comments, Joel Haspel, CEO, Sentient Health, remarked: "Unfortunately this is not an uncommon occurrence in the NHS. But often this is symptomatic of poor catalog management (multiple contracts for the same item) and/or bad operations (multiple ordering processes that don't enforce using the right contract)."