HSCIC responsible for slow progress

The Health and Social Care Information Centre is significantly responsible for the “painfully slow” progress of interoperability in the NHS, the chair of the organisation has said.

Speaking at the HC2014 conference in Manchester this morning, Kingsley Manning, said the HSCIC needs to take a “radically different approach” to ensuring patient data is accessible and accurate where it is needed at the point of care.

“Despite many years of preaching interoperability, progress has been painfully slow. And I recognise that the organisation I now chair bears a significant responsibility for this,” he said.

“We have to recognise, how by comparison to other industries, we have failed to make the progress that is needed. Both professional and patient expectations to information systems, are sadly too often, and too rightly, very low.”

He explained that in a recent audit of 18 acute NHS trusts, the HSCIC found that 77% of records are handwritten before being typed into the computer and that junior doctors spend two thirds of their time looking for and dealing with patients’ notes.

Manning said that the HSCIC will extend its work on reducing this, and that he hopes that NSH England’s technology funds will help alleviate some of the pressure.

Turning the conversation to care.data, Manning said that there is “not necessarily any contradiction” between the aims of a commercial organisation and the NHS.

“Many of the commercial information intermediaries who make use of our data releases are supporting NHS organisations to plan, transform and deliver their services,” he said.

“With respect to the pharmaceutical industry not only does it represent a major contributor to the UK economy, but they are also critical in developing new treatments. It would be perverse if we weren't to support their activities and their endeavours.”

Manning added that he understands that the public is “suspicious” that this means the arrangements are, “in some way unfairly tipped in favour of the profit makers.”

“This suspicion has been fuelled by our innocent lack of transparency,” he said.

The HSCIC will be publishing an audit report of its own data releases in April this year, and the data releases of its predecessor, the NHS Information Centre, this summer.

“I have no doubt as to the critical role that data will play in the health and care system of the future; we can't afford to get this wrong,” he said.