The first picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) installed under the National Programme for IT went live recently but details are not being made public yet.
News of the PACS ‘go-lives’ was buried among the list of IT modernisation achievements in the annual report on the NHS by the service’s chief executive, Sir Nigel Crisp, last week.
E-Health Insider asked for details of the installations but learned from the national programme that it will probably be mid-June before further information is released. “There are a couple of sites that have gone live recently but we want to give them a bit of time to ‘bed in’ before we make an announcement,” said a spokesman.
Sir Nigel’s report also records visits to NHS Direct Online up by 42%. The web-based service had 9,285,000 in 2004-5 – 2,743,000 more than during the previous year. The phone-based NHS Direct service experienced a much smaller growth of 2.8%, rising to 6,586,000 calls in the year.
The report portrays the rise in demand for NHS Direct as a future trend towards rising activity in community-based services. It also records the start of the new NHS interactive digital channel in December 2004 but does not give any figures for activity so far.
Sir Nigel says in his introduction to the report that the service is only five years into the NHS plan and still in transition.
He writes: “The main emphasis in the early years has been on building capacity – more staff and facilities – and making targeted improvements. Emphasis from now on will be on improving quality in all its aspects and on securing value for money for the public.”
The list of NHS Connecting for Health achievements is included in the “Innovation” section of the report. Other milestones listed, apart from the news about the PACS installations, include the first booking on Choose and Book, the first pilot for the electronic transfer of prescriptions, the roll out of the Quality Management and Analysis (QMAS) system for GP practices and the launch of the secure clinical email and directory service, Connect.