Three clinical commissioning groups in North Mersey have set up a joint IM&T board to provide strategic overview of IM&T programmes in the region.
A number of clinical and management clinical commissioning group leads sit on the board, along with the primary care trust cluster head of information and intelligence, and Kate Warriner, head of IM&T commissioning at North Mersey Health Informatics Service.
The three CCG areas are Liverpool Matchworks, South Sefton, and Southport and Formby. Liverpool Matchworks shadow CCG chair Dr Simon Bowers said the IM&T board was borne out of the wider iLinks programme.
This was set up to support new services with shared patient records that can be accessed by different clinical groups, primarily using EMIS Web.
That project showed there was a need for central control of IM&T development across the health economy and everyone felt this had to be led by clinicians, he explained.
“Getting clinicians together with a firm hand on the tiller and encouraging innovation from the trusts and providers seemed like a sensible way forward,” said Dr Bowers. “The board has a strategic eye on what everybody needs to be doing from an IM&T point of view.”
The IM&T board is “strictly advisory” to the CCG boards. The groups “set the clinical agenda” and the board works out “how IM&T will support it and feed back into the agenda”, he explained.
Board membersheld their second meeting last Friday and have finalised an IM&T strategy which is being presented to CCG boards for their approval.
“The strategy has got to be the same from the point of view of where we (CCGs) are going and the principle is that it works through interoperability,” Dr Bowers said.
“It’s not about limiting anyone’s choice of software, but putting pressure on providers to make sure the software talks to eachother.”
Bowers said the group was writing to IT directors and medical directors at local trusts and providers to let them know about the role of the IM&T board. He was happy to invite these directors to any of its meetings to discuss latest innovations or plans and expected them to inform the board of what they were doing in return.
Kate Warriner, head of IM&T commissioning at North Mersey HIS, said the board’s role was to ensure all IM&T programmes were fully aligned to the clinical and business needs of CCGs.
“As we move through the transition (in the NHS), it’s absolutely essential that whatever we do around IM&T and technology supports the CCGs and their strategies – and to succeed, it’s absolutely got to be clinically lead.”