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Connecting for health
More independent public scrutiny needed
From Mr N. G. Ford, MRPharmS
Andrew Gledhill (PJ, 3 December, p685) informs us that new patient administration
systems are to be installed over the next 12 months in most NHS hospitals
and confidently predicts that we are to have this technology in place soon
and save lives. Although I applaud such optimism I think a word of caution
might be appropriate, based on long years of experience in using information
technology in the acute sector.
From my experience there has to be a strong commitment by local management,
clinical staff and local IT competence to implement these systems successfully.
At Burton Hospitals NHS Trust we have a system that has been slowly developing
over a number of years and has a sophisticated electronic prescribing and
drug administration system integrated into a fairly comprehensive electronic
patient record system. Our systems have involved many years of commitment
and have overcome many technical, managerial and local political obstacles.
We have found that system specifications can become a dreamy wish list
if not structured into a realistic implementation strategy, and based solidly
on existing and proven technology. So the complexity and commitment required
at a local level to get these systems to work must not be underestimated.
Regretfully, our system, along with other systems, is sometimes referred
to as a “legacy” system either for convenience or through ignorance
of the level of functionality achieved.
The national Connecting
for Health programme, as its name suggests, seems
to be changing the emphasis to connecting our systems and pooling key information
needed for improving communication and patient care. Much of the essential
infrastructure to enable this technology, both hardware and standardised
coding is at last being put into place. However, it will always be up to
local trust management and employees to put in the necessary hard work
to develop and implement local systems that can exploit this new information
infrastructure that will, we hope, evolve in the coming years over the
NHSnet and provide support to clinical staff in caring for patients. I
am not sure this technology will save many lives, but it will certainly
help us treat patients more effectively, improve safety, efficiency and
quality of care and may even improve the flagging image of the NHS as a
well run service.
The National Programme for IT has made a lot of promises, many of which
are being honoured in the primary sector. I await with interest developments
in the secondary sector. No one can doubt the aims of the programme but
I believe more independent public scrutiny of the programme is needed because
of the large sums of money and commercial interest involved and better
use made of all that hard-won experience from the users of existing systems.
Nick Ford
Burton on Trent,
Staffordshire |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal