29. oktober 2010
IT strategy in the UK's National Health Service is set to undergo a radical change. One of the results is a new strategy where the patient's view will be more included in the IT-solutions, by giving the patients access to their own records. CSAM has the solutions and capabilities to meet these new requirements.
See also the article
"CSAM and the future of NHS information technology" , published September 14th 2010.
IT strategy in the UK's National Health Service is set to undergo a radical change. The Department of Health has asked for views on the ways in which IT needs to develop to support the proposals in the recent white paper
'Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS' .
This document proposed a radical change in the way the NHS is run. The intention is to create an NHS in which the patients have much more control and choice about what happens to them. The underlying principle is ‘no decision about me without me’. To achieve this, the way in which information is collected and accessed is vital. It will be essential that data are accurate and up to date. The data which are collected should be driven by the needs of patient care, not the requirements of managers. Above all, patients should have access to their records and be able to retain copies.
Of course, there are many questions which will have to be answered. Security and confidentiality are a major concern as at all stages individual privacy will have to be protected. How people will make use of the information is also important, including the need to educate people about the significance of the information they are being given. Health providers will have to decide who can alter the information of make entries.
This move is good news for CSAM. To give patients comprehensive information it will be necessary to draw on data from a number of sources and present it in an easily understood form. Access will need to be controlled. We already have the capability, in the Plexus Portal, to meet these needs, with its ease of integration with systems across a whole health community and its intuitive user interface.
The consultation is open until January, after which the input will be brought together in a new strategy sometime around April. CSAM (UK) will be contributing its views to help shape the future of NHS IT strategy.