It said that patients need "a 21st century digital NHS, capable of creating personalised information and interactive services," with primary care trusts acting as "commissioners of information" for their areas.
Tim Kelsey, founder of health information firm Dr Foster, and health policy consultant Hilary Rowell delivered the report, Information, Insight and Interaction, in March 2009. However, it has only just been published as a result of a Freedom of Information request from Health Service Journal.
The report recommended the establishment of a national digital services agency, which would "stimulate the local generation of authoritative high quality digital content" and would manage and develop "an integrated national multichannel platform" for patient information.
This platform would be "a national multichannel 'front door' to the NHS, both because this is more cost effective than myriad regional 'shop windows', but also to simplify and facilitate access for people". It pointed out that there are several such front doors, including NHS Choices, NHS Direct, HealthSpace and Choose & Book, both on the phone and online. This was true a year ago and remains the case now.
Despite recommending an integrated platform, the report said that local content would "provide the real engine" of such a service, with primary care trusts having to provide data about local health services, and facilitate the provision of similar data on social care services. It would also extend to transactional services such as appointment booking and test results.
The national agency would not have a monopoly on setting up digital and interactive services, but would provide an open platform through which such services could be showcased and shared. Local NHS organisations could also commission services from the agency if they wanted.
Kelsey and Rowell, who interviewed professionals and patients from a range of NHS organisations, recommended that Department of Health should also start co-production projects with groups of primary care trusts, to make a start on such ideas as soon as possible.
A Department of Health spokesperson said: "The report recognises the success of both NHS Direct and NHS Choices and it makes clear that integrated national digital services are essential to the long term future of the NHS.
"In fact, NHS Choices is now the most popular health website in the UK, recording more than 9m visits a month, while more than 50,000 patients access NHS Direct services through the internet every day.
"It is only right that in a digital age we are continually looking at ways to work more efficiently, which is why for example NHS Direct and NHS Choices work closely together to ensure the public have access to the widest range of reliable health information and advice."
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