IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Fujitsu, the prime contractor for the southern regional cluster is to replace one of its key IT suppliers, Connecting for Health confirmed on 1 June 2005.

The contractor is to terminate its agreement with software supplier IDX, which was providing a common solution for electronic records across London and the southern cluster.

Working with local NHS organisations it plans to distribute 1.3 million information booklets to every NHS employee.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley told reporters last week that NHS Direct would be replaced with a new 111 number service. But the helpline told EHI Primary Care that news of its demise was premature.

“It’s not the end of the organisation but the end of the [NHS Direct] number,” a spokesperson said when asked to clarify whether the organisation is being scrapped or subsumed within a new set-up.

The NHS advice service is looking to expand its digital TV availability, it said on 29 September 2005.

NHS Direct which is available by phone, internet and on the Sky TV platform is continuing to gain in popularity, a spokesperson told Government Computing News.

The new website, www.nhsdirect.wales.nhs.uk, was launched last Thursday to give patients and public more information to make decisions about their own health and care.

The new database should make it easier to monitor patients with long-term conditions.

Connecting for Health, originally launched 2002, has faced a series of problems including reports it is running four years late.

Just one of the acute care hospitals due to install the system has done so - Royal Free NHS Trust in London - and that is experiencing difficulties getting it to operate properly.

Health Minister Andy Kerr said the initiative, the first of its kind in the UK, would help in the fight against HAI by providing frontline NHS staff with knowledge on best practice for combating hospital infection.

The organisation in charge of the £12.7bn NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is facing yet another shake-up.

Martin Bellamy, previously head of Connecting for Health (CfH), the NHS agency responsible for NPfIT, is moving to the Cabinet Office to head up the government’s G-cloud strategy, a plan announced in last week's Digital Britain report that aims to move all Whitehall IT services to an internal cloud computing environment.

Rather than minimising the security risk, the Spine provides “both a bigger target and a larger number points of attack” than if the NHS used a group of smaller systems.

Plans for the future of the Summary Care Records, a single database of patient data accessible by all NHS staff nationwide, will also make the system “more difficult to use.”

NHS trusts are lacking the IT skills needed to deliver the information changes planned by the government, according to Intellect.

In a surprising warning from the body that represents IT services firms, Intellect said that outsourcing NHS IT under the £12.7 billion National Programme for IT had essentially left some trusts without the skills needed. Nevertheless, it also made a number of detailed recommendations for handling information and improving processes with IT.

It referred to the system as "the world's most comprehensive database on the prevalence and management of common chronic diseases," in a statement issued on 31 August 2005.

The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) database is part of the system that manages payments to GPs based on the correct care for patients. Payments are determined by how many points GPs score in treating patients in line with a set of indicators for the appropriate care.

The NHS has officially launched the Health and Social Care Information Centre in an effort to reduce the administrative burden on staff.

It is hoped that the new body will improve the quality of information for patients and healthcare professionals.

Richard Granger will become Chief Executive and Senior Responsible Officer for Programme and Systems Delivery. He remains Director General for IT. John Bacon, Department of Health Group Director for Delivery, becomes overarching Senior Responsible Officer for all workstreams for the programme. Both Richard Granger and John Bacon continue to report to the NHS Chief Executive, Sir Nigel Crisp.