- Smart Healthcare, Monday 23 November 2009 15.02 GMT
Photo: BCS
"It does the NHS no favours to claim either that it has been a disaster, when many real gains have been achieved, or that it is triumph, when so many of the objectives have palpably not been met yet," Matthew Swindells told SmartHealthcare.com.
In written answers to a series of questions, he said a more flexible solution is needed to cope with the speed of change and need for local ownership. "The technology is available to support this in a way that it wasn't when the programme was launched, and the National Programme changed a great deal in the past two years to reflect this," he said.
"The National Programme must become ever more fleet of foot and position itself as a platform for innovation, rather than the only acceptable way. However, it should also be proud of its successes and continue strive towards a system that joins up the information needed to support care. Throwing away the vision because it got difficult would be a monumental mistake."
Swindells, who left the NHS job last year and has just been appointed as head of the BCS's Health Informatics Forum, said that examining the health service's use of IT was "the wrong question". "One of the NHS's failures has been that it has focused too much on IT and not enough on information," he said, adding that it is the information that saves lives and allows the monitoring and improving of services.
"I'd like us to spend more time talking about how we liberate the information, and that we have and less time talking about who supplies the boxes to hold the information."
He added that informatics will play a crucial role in the future of the health service. "The challenge is for the NHS to raise the quality of its services, whilst dramatically reducing costs. I find it hard to imagine that the NHS can succeed in doing this without the support of information technology. I will be working to the build skills and confidence of the informatics community to fully contribute to this strategic challenge."
Swindells said he has two main aims in his new post at the BCS: helping the government and NHS make better policy decisions on information and IT, and raising the expertise of NHS staff in this area, both among informatics professionals and the health service's general staff.
Swindells, whose 20 year career in the NHS included being head of IT at Guy's and St Thomas' hospital and later chief executive at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, said it is vital that informatics staff engage with their organisation's strategic directions.
"The NHS leadership has never had a better understanding of the role of information in driving quality and productivity, but, worryingly, confidence in our ability to meet that challenge is very low," he said. "I believe that I can use my knowledge and experience to help the BCS Health Informatics Forum address the challenge of equipping the informatics profession to drive improvement in the NHS from its core."
