One of England’s largest local digital roadmap footprints says it needs at least £100 million of outside funding to achieve its digital goals.
Hampshire and the Isle of Wight’s ambitious draft LDR includes an electronic patient record replacement, a transition to electronic document management and wi-fi implementations.
Price tags for the wish list include £20m for the EPR replacement, £4m for the EDM and £10m to support a £50 million project to overhaul and modernise one of its hospital’s core technology platform.
The region is recognised as being digitally advanced with the Hampshire Health Record (HHR), one of the UK’s longest is running shared care record involving data for 1.9 million patients.
The roadmap’s vision also includes a single patient portal to access services by 2018/19, established population health analytics capability across the region and real time integration of pathology results into local EPR and HHR at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust by March 2017.
What challenges is the footprint facing?
The footprint, covering rural, urban and island areas, faces issues with connectivity, transport and ensuring digital maturity is level across the field.
The Care Quality Commission has rated both Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust as requiring improvement. In April this year, the regulatory body told Portsmouth to make immediate alterations to one of its emergency departments.
The footprint is also projecting a widening health funding gap of between £610m and £719m by 2020/21 and is hoping to us the LRD to help close the shortfall.
Which health organisations are within the footprint?
There are eight clinical commissioning groups, nine trusts and four local authorities in the roadmap, covering more than two million people. This is about 3% of the national footprint.
How much money is being spent on IT by the trusts?
Digital Health Intelligence figures for 2014, shows Solent NHS Trust spent £12m on IT, Hampshire Hospitals spent £5m, and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, spent £8m.
The roadmap found that the estimated that the footprint needed £35m capital investment a year, with addition revenue implications of about £10m annually.
What is the digital maturity of the footprint?
Of the nine trusts, four have Clinical Digital Maturity Index scores in the Digital Health Intelligence index, dating from May this year. The highest is Hampshire Hospitals that scored 88 with a ranking of 11/152, and the lowest was Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust with a score of 54 and ranking of 147/152.
What systems are some of the bigger organisations using?
Southampton Teaching are using a EMIS Health EPR and PAS, Portsmouth Hospitals are using Graphnet Health EPR and a CSC PAS, and GPs are using mixture of EMIS and TPP
What are the plans for increasing interoperability?
The roadmap says there should be professional read/write access to the digital health and care record through a clinician’s systems by 2020/21. Patients should be able control who accesses this record by 2018/19.
How will these plans work if no central funding is forthcoming?
The LDR is adamant that outside help is needed, stating “there will be a significant gap between the investment needed and identified”. Digital Health News investigated the draft LDRs in September and found all the footprints required significant investment to work.
This is first in series of stories focusing on local digital roadmaps, the final versions of which will be released this year. To learn more about the Digital Maturity of organisations involved in the Hampshire and the Isle of Wight LDR, visit Digital Health Intelligence (subscription / log-in required).
The full list of organisations in this LDR footprint is:
• Four local authorities: Southampton City Council, Hampshire County Council, Portsmouth City Council, Isle of Wight Council
• Trusts: Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Solent NHS Trust, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, Isle of Wight NHS Trust, Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• CCGs: North East Hampshire and Farnham CCG, North Hampshire CCG, West Hampshire CCG, South Eastern Hampshire CCG, Isle of Wight CCG, Southampton City CCG, Fareham and Gosport CCG, Portsmouth CCG
• Other supporting organisations: South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit, Wessex Academic Health Science Network, North Hampshire Urgent Care, Care UK
• Five localities: Isle of Wight, North Hampshire, North East Hampshire & Farnham, South East Hampshire, West/South West Hampshire