[London, UK / Implementations] - The Department of Health Informatics Directorate (DHID) has published the “first full version” of a joint report with IT industry trade body Intellect: A joint plan to foster a healthy and vibrant healthcare IT market. Initial issue.
The aim of the plan is to develop this market (in England only) for the “benefit of NHS organisations, the IT supplier community and patients and public alike”. It is part of a series of initiatives to support the supplier community and improve local NHS decision making in procuring new IT systems in a climate of “mature partnership working”.
A new position at Director General level will be created in the Department of Health to oversee the plan — to be announced following DH/NHS organisational announcements around March — and delivery will be the responsibility of the DHID Head of Industry Liaison.
Several key initiatives have been identified as part of the joint plan, the most prominent of which is the long-awaited information strategy for the NHS. This still appears to be months away from being announced. The report says that Intellect and the Department of Health held three workshops last month for industry experts to provide input to the information strategy and that there will be further engagement as the strategy develops. It is expected to “provide the context for all of our joint work over the next 5-10 years”, notwithstanding elections, of course.
Other key initiatives include the Informed Client, which aims to educate NHS management and healthcare professionals about the benefits of IT so that there is a “pull” for technology from within the NHS rather than a push from industry. A Joint Communications initiative will use a variety of communications channels to inform the NHS of agreed areas of joint work. More details on both of these will be published by the end of March.
Three subject workstreams have been identified where the new relationship with industry will enable the healthcare IT market to “move forwards”. Each will have a joint team established by February which will report by May 2012. The streams are: information sharing and governance — within clinical teams and across health and care; standards, requirements and accreditation, which includes the Interoperability Toolkit (ITK); and NHS procurement, which has been identified as a problem for companies trying to sell to the NHS, especially SMEs.
To support the plan, Connecting for Health conducted a survey of systems and suppliers used in the NHS in England and has published the data in spreadsheet files. Up to November 2011, 361 NHS organisations had replied with at least some data — including PCTs, acute trusts, mental health trusts, informatics services, strategic health authorities, and ambulance trusts. This incomplete data shows there are just over one million active IT users, 846,000 desktop PCs, 146,000 laptops, 48,000 smartphones/ PDAs, and 11,000 tablet PCs in the NHS in England.[hw]
[Related information]
The plan and supporting information on systems and suppliers used by the NHS are available on the Connecting for Health webpage: "Supporting informed NHS customers for information technology"
