Making the most of the National Programme for IT in the NHS —
learning from experience
Lead clinicians in the Shires and Pan Bristol and Weston
EPR-implementation projects, Dr Roger Tackley, Mr Stephen
Jones, Dr Anthony Madden and Dr Richard Dunnill,
comment on the perceived course of the NPfIT’s plans to support
integrated healthcare. They urge stronger recognition of the hurdles
they encountered in their recently truncated area-wide
EPR-implementation projects.
keywords: electronic
patient record, clinician involvement, national programme for nhs it,
system integration, system design, system implementation, system
procurement
abstract
The new National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT) includes many
elements that we clinicians have been waiting for since the 1992 NHS
IM&T (information management and technology) strategy. Experience gained
in recent large electronic patient record procurements should be heeded
by the NPfIT, which, among other things, proposes that in phase 1
existing NHS systems should feed clinical information to a national data
spine. Currently, it is unrealistic to assume that existing systems
contain accurate, validated clinical information suitable for treating
patients other than in primary care. This will only be achieved across
the spectrum of care when local information systems share the same
clinical record as that used for treating patients. The introduction of
sophisticated local information systems to support clinicians at the
point of care must be the first step.
Br J Healthcare Comput Info Manage 2003; 20(10): 25–7. |
