The Welsh NHS IT reform programme, Informing Healthcare (IHC), has just released its National Case document and formally set up a series of Service Improvement Projects to start the process of implementing electronic health records in a number of key areas.
The projects will focus on the areas of chronic disease management, unified assessment and transfer of care, and will consist of redesigning work practices around records that will evolve into a Single Electronic Record. These initial areas were chosen through stakeholder consultation.
Gwyn Thomas, programme director of IHC, told E-Health Insider that the National Case was "the logical continuation of all of the design work carried out to determine the functionally of the Single Record, which was the basis of the IHC strategy.
"The IHC Programme is moving into delivery mode, because the design work has now reached a level of maturity."
The National Case represents IHC’s implementation strategy, and according to Thomas, it will provide a measure against which progress can be reported and a basis for accountability and investment.
The Case also gives a frank assessment of the state of Welsh NHS information technology and communication, saying that the local infrastructure has suffered from underfunding and has been fragmented, and that many systems are "institution-centric". It calls for a technical architecture to be developed so that IT systems can be sufficiently robust to back up the programme.
The document additionally sets out IHC’s relationship with the English health IT programme run by NHS Connecting for Health, saying that it intends to be a customer of the programme "as long as it meets with our requirements in terms of specification, delivery and affordability."
Thomas told E-Health Insider: "The emphasis of the programme is now shifting to be driven by clinical-led Service Improvement Projects. The requirements of patients and clinicians will be used to determine the deployment of the technology infrastructure, which will enable essential data about patients to be made available in free text and a structured form and presented to patients and clinicians wherever care is delivered."
This care record will eventually evolve into the Single Electronic Record, designed through clinician consultation by IHC, which will be portable across the UK and have audited access.
According to the National Case document, IT provides the opportunity to integrate the fragmented healthcare organisations within Wales and to allow information to be shared seamlessly across borders. "We can integrate patient care only if we can integrate patient information," it says.
Informing Healthcare is currently recruiting for a number of director-level posts, including a clinical director responsible for engagement with healthcare professionals, and a director of implementation.
Documents
Informing Healthcare: The National Case [PDF, 737K]
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Life outside NPfIT: Wales
[Oct 2004 EHI interview with then IHC interim programme director, Bob Grindrod]
Links