NHS Connecting for Health has outlined a new timetable for changing the way in which data is sent to the NHS Care Records Service.
Its latest guidance indicates that from July 2006 trusts will need to begin submitting their commissioning data sets to the CRS’s Secondary Uses Services in XML. Trusts will need to phase out their use of EDIFACT in the following six months before Clearnet is turned off in favour of SUS in January 2007.
Guidance from NHS Connecting for Health says: "Providers must plan to migrate from EDIFACT to XML between these dates." Pilot schemes to test the migration are due to get up and running in April, for completion by June.
The SUS provides the basis for trusts payment claims under Payment by Results. If they cannot submit their data in the correct format, their payments from PCTs could be threatened.
The XML-based system was developed by BT under a national contract and is described as a simple, interactive web application that allows uses to validate their CDS-XML files and send them over XTS – the XML Transfer Service.
However, Ardentia – one of the subcontractors providing translation services to trusts under the national BT/Syntegra contract – says trusts are not ready.
A survey of 100 senior IT staff carried out for Ardentia by Business Intelligence Direct in December 2005 found that 68 per cent of trusts have not yet found a solution for submitting in XML.
Even though they were all aware that the change was due to happen, 41 per cent had not yet started to review XML solution providers. Only 27 per cent were reviewing providers.
Tony Leighton, account manager for Ardentia, which has developed a translation tool for migrating data from EDIFACT to XML, said that although trusts had until the end of the year to make the full switch, they would need to do some preparation and test the market.
"You can’t have more than 300 organisations moving at the same time. There will need to be an even spread," he said.
However, Jeremy Thorp, programme director of SUS at NHS CfH said he was not worried by the survey results.
NHS CfH had been concentrating primarily on making sure the nine existing suppliers were compliant before expecting trusts to make any move. Data is already being submitted to SUS centrally, he said. Data extracts are being analysed locally by PCTs and SHAs rather than automatically as originally envisaged.
Mr Thorp said: "We had originally talked about people migrating data for August last year. But given that we had worked with BT to develop a system for getting data into SUS it was not our number one priority."
CfH is expecting the nine approved translation service providers – many of whom already translate NHS trust data into EDIFACT – to offer solutions locally.
But Thorp said: "Trusts will need at some stage to identify a supplier." The introduction in October 2006 of the critical care minimum data set – which will not support EDIFACT – is the effective date by which trusts must have migrated their data.
Mr Thorp’s "reasonably relaxed" approach was backed up by senior IT staff contacted by EHI who confirmed that they would be looking to their existing suppliers to provide translation services. One said: "Of course we will have to pay for this extra service."