Every year, EHI likes to set its readers a quiz to test their recall of the memorable – or frankly baffling – events of the previous year, as reflected in the comings and goings, statistics and jargon of NHS IT.

This year was no exception. Impressively, most of the entrants got most of the questions right; even those that we expected to trip people up, such as DID4LA (or de-identified for limited access data, one of the many, many confusing acronyms that has been introduced to simplify NHS information governance…)

However, only one entrant got all the answers right. Nilesh Jain, functional architect for Lorenzo at CSC and holder of many other posts on NHS IT bodies, who was also the winner of the quiz two years and three years ago. To find out how you got on, see the answers that are now published below:

A. The news quiz: pasting paperless everywhere:

One political speech dominated healthcare IT in 2013, and had far reaching consequence…

  1. Which politician gave a speech in January, calling for a ‘paperless’ NHS by 2018?

    Health secretary Jeremy Hunt

  2. What was the title of the guidance that NHS England issued for bidders in July, that introduced a whole new acronym to NHS IT?

    Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards: achieving an integrated digital care record (IDCR)

     

    B. Hello, goodbye, Tim

    Which people arrived on the NHS IT scene in 2013, and which left?

  3. The long-standing chief executive of the NHS, sometimes dubbed Stalin, who announced his retirement this year.

    David Nicholson

  4. The former Blairite health advisor and United Health vice-president who was announced as his replacement.

    Simon Stevens

  5. The chief executive of the GP system supplier, EMIS, who stepped down in the spring.

    Sean Riddell

  6. The former consultant who arrived to chair the Health and Social Care Information Centre, and make it “the Office of National Statistics” for health (according to an EHI interview).

    Kingsley Manning

  7. The survivor of the NHS Information Authority, who went to head up NHS IT and then government IT in Wales, and who has retired – but also become chair of UKCHIP.

    Gwyn Thomas

    Meanwhile, to get ahead in NHS IT these days, it helps to be called Tim. Which Tims have these job titles?

  8. NHS England’s national director of patients and information.

    Tim Kelsey

  9. The senior responsible owner for the local service provider programmes (who found himself up before the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee this year).

    Tim Donohoe

  10. The first / interim chief executive of the Health and Social Care Information Centre

    Tim Straughan

    C. The news quiz: money, money, money

    The government has found some money for its paperless aspirations, but how much?

  11. How much money will be sunk into NHS IT over the next three years, according to health secretary Jeremy Hunt? And how is that number arrived at?

    £1 billion – or £1 billion, ten million – £260m from tech fund 1 and matched trust funding, £250m from tech fund 2 with matched trust funding

  12. How much was supposed to be spent before March next year?

    £90m

    D. The numbers game:

    Put numbers to these well-known NHS challenges and IT related developments:

  13. 13. The potential gap between funding and demand that the NHS could be facing by 2020, if it fails to deliver on the Nicholson Challenge, according to warnings issued at this year’s NHS Confederation conference.

    £30 billion

  14. The amount of money in the Nursing Tech Fund.

    £100m

  15. The number of the troubled telephone helpline service that was supposed to be rolled out by April this year, but now won’t be rolled out until the same time next year, and which has done for NHS Direct.

    NHS 111

  16. The date by which patients were supposed to have access to their GP records and will now have access to the information in the Summary Care Record.

    2015

    E. The news quiz: care dot whatnot

    NHS England really cares; you can tell that by the names it gives to its projects:

  17. What is the name of the new data service being created by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, which will link HES to lots and lots of new data sets.

    Care.data

  18. What is the name of the call, tweet, post contact service being created by NHS England, based on 311 in the US?

    Care Connect

    F. Give me a letter:

    If the NHS loves acronyms, and NHS IT really loves acronyms, then NHS information governance really, really loves them. What do the following stand for?

  19. NHSE

    NHS England, the former NHS Commissioning Board

  20. COTS

    Common [or commercial] off-the-shelf systems

  21. CDMI

    Clinical Digital Maturity Index

  22. ASH

    Accredited safe haven

  23. DID4LA

    De-identified for limited access data

    Sometimes, the NHS even manages to introduce a three letter acronym and abolish it within a matter of months; replacing it, of course, with another TLA. What do the following recent introductions and their replacements stand for?

  24. ICSP – HSCDS

    Integrated Customer Service Platform – Health and Social Care Digital Service

  25. DMIC – RCP

    Data Management Integration Centre – Regional Processing Centre

  26. PID – PCD

    Patient Identifiable Data – Patient Confidential Data

    G. They said what?

    Who was responsible for the following quotes, all of which were included in EHI news stories or made ‘quote of the week’ in EHI newsletters in 2013?

  27. "The NHS can provide great care and the system and the people in it should make sure that happens everywhere."

    Robert Francis QC, delivering his second report on the Mid Staffs scandal

  28. “We think this [linking 100 genome sequences to medical records] will be as significant as the founding of the internet.”

    Health secretary Jeremy Hunt, speaking at the Washington Datapalooza conference

  29. “Over the next couple of years I expect something like 50,000 clinicians to have gone through Code4Health.”

    NHS England’s national director of patients and information, Tim Kelsey, speaking to EHI

  30. “I think that many of us, if we were asked how to build an electronic patient record, would quite reasonably say: ‘Well, I wouldn’t start from here’.”

    Adrian Byrne, IT director of University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, and EHI’s newest columnist