Trisha Greenhalgh on Summary Care Record - where does the truth lie? - Public Sector IT Projects. "The National Programme for IT: it's time to acknowledge the elephant in the room" Professor Trisha Greenhalgh OBE is Director of the Healthcare Innovation and Policy Unit at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London. She led the independent evaluation of the Summary Care Record Programme.
The evaluation cost taxpayers more than £723,000, and there is no sign that the Department of Health and NHS Connecting for Health will take seriously the concerns the report raises. The views expressed in the article that follows are Trisha Greenhalgh's: "Last week, I asked a packed conference hall of general practitioners if any of them had ever seen a Summary Care Record. "Yet 30 million people in England have received a letter saying that a Summary Care Record will shortly be created for them from their GP-held medical record. A pantomime-style clash? "Here is a clash of narratives that would sit comfortably in a pantomime. Where does the truth lie? Links: Confidential report on Summary Care Records finds database is inaccurate - Public Sector IT Projects. The Summary Care Records database - which is central to the government's plans to create health records for 50 million people - contains inaccuracies and omissions that make it difficult for doctors to trust it as a single source of truth, according to a confidential draft report.
The findings by researchers at University College London, are likely to reinforce the concerns of the British Medical Association which has called for a halt to the "rushed" rollout of the "imperfect" Summary Care Record scheme. The Government launched Summary Care Records to help doctors and nurses make better clinical decisions. The aim is for clinicians and out-of-hours doctors to have access, particularly in an emergency, to a central record of a patient's allergies, medications and adverse reactions to drugs. The database also indicated allergies or adverse reactions to drugs the patient did not have. The inaccurate information in the central database came from uploads of patient records by GP practices.
Electronic patient records. Since the 1980s computers have increasingly become a part of our daily lives. Initially this was at work, but gradually they have become part of our home lives too. Now we don't even think about the computers that surround us: from mobile phones to the washing machine, in our cars, mobile music players, alarm clocks... what doesn't have a computer chip inside it these days?
So it was natural we should look to computers to help manage the enormous task of keeping our health records safely and accurately. The RCN plays an active role in advising on EPR systems at a national and local level. What is the EPR? What would you want from an electronic patient record? Finding information You want to get information about your patient, what care they have had in the past, where, by whom, etc. Updating the record You want to enter data about your own contribution to care. That's the least you would expect from a record system, but we could ask for more.
How might the EPR actually improve care? Defn-systemsthinking.pdf (application/pdf Object) NPfIT is virtually dead says NHS Trust - Public Sector IT Projects. Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Trust has commissioned a review of its IT strategy in view of what it calls the "virtual demise" of the NPfIT, the National Programme for IT in the NHS. An executive paper to the Trust's Board in June 2010 shows how little impression the NPfIT has made in some parts of the NHS, despite a spend so far on the national programme of about £5bn.
Since its launch in 2002, the NPfIT has been spoken of with reverence by notables and ministers who include Lord Hunt, John Read, Patricia Hewitt, Caroline Flint, Ben Bradshaw, Andy Burnham, John Hutton, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Too soon to say the NPfIT is dead? In my view it's too soon to say the NPfIT is dead. But some NPfIT Care Records Service implementations are in trouble That said, the NPfIT's success could be said to pivot on the Care Record Service implementations by local service providers BT and CSC of Cerner Millennium and iSoft's Lorenzo. Links: Is the NPfIT in London officially in tatters? National_programme_implementation_guide.pdf (application/pdf Object) 390.pdf (application/pdf Object) Fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=news&rft.atitle=Technology%3A+Inside+IT%3A+A+spineless+performance%3A+The+government%27s+vision+for+the+NHS+was+shamed+by+the+inconvenient+failure+of+its+new+IT+system&rft.jtitle=The+Guardian&rft.au=Michael+Cross&rft.date=200.
Fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Need+for+better+communication+is+vital+as+doctors+voice+deep+concerns+about+NPfIT&rft.jtitle=Computer+Weekly&rft.au=Tony+Collins&rft.date=2005-02-08&rft.issn=0010-4787&rft.spage=16&rft.externalDBID=CMWK&rft. Journal of Information Technology - Modernising healthcare - is the NPfIT for purpose?
Journal of Information Technology - A computer scientist's reactions to NPfIT. NPfIT failure - Summon: Computing & Library Services, University of Huddersfield. Articles on npfit. The end of NPfIT announced. NPfIT future is modular and locally-led. 9 September 2010 Sarah Bruce Richmond House The National Programme for IT in the NHS’ centralised and national approach is “no longer required” and trusts will instead be able to operate “a more locally-led plural system of procurement”, health minister Simon Burns has announced. In a ministerial statement this morning, Burns said that a Department of Health review of the national programme had concluded that a new, “modular” approach to implementation should also be adopted. The statement said that the two changes together would allow “NHS organisations to introduce smaller, more manageable change in line with their business requirements and capacity.” “Improving IT is essential to delivering a patient-centred NHS.
“We will allow hospitals to use and develop the IT they already have and add to their environment, either by integrating systems purchased through the national contracts or elsewhere.” New arrangements for the oversight of these services will be in place by 2012.