- Smart Healthcare, Wednesday 23 September 2009 09.00 BST
Last month, Dr Glyn Hayes published his Independent Review of NHS and Social Care IT, at the behest of Stephen O'Brien, a shadow minister for health. It makes a big claim, that "the patient must be at the centre of all information systems".
Great: as your resident patient, I have to applaud, but they all say that, don't they? As a frequent-flyer on the NHS, I have scoured Glyn Hayes' report, to see whether it addresses any of the patient-unfriendly things I have been going on about here in the last few months.
There is nothing about bringing the NHS into the email age, so that hospital medics do not have to talk by snail mail to other departments in their hospitals, to GPs and patients. This, I keep on saying, delays treatment to us patients and causes distress to our families. To enter the email age seems to me both a no-brainer and a low-hanging fruit.
There is nothing in the report on another of my obsessions, about cutting more paper out of secondary care, or trying to reduce the burden of transcription, which slows down the whole NHS in time and money. And patients like me suffer the consequences. GPs have been paperless for years. Why not hospitals?
There is hardly any mention of telecare, which seems to elderly patients like me a good way of avoiding MRSA and swine flu, by reducing the number of our visits to infected hospitals and GP surgeries.
But, I shouldn't be too beastly to the Hayes report. Its heart is in the right place: with the patient. Its main thrust is that the data collected should be about clinical patient outcomes, not management data, like targets and tick-lists. And, glory be, patients are to be involved with vetting the data in their records. I can only applaud.
There is to be no more 'rip and replace', and the National Programme for IT's local service providers are to be consigned to outer darkness, as is the Spine. Good news, but kind of negative.
The report calls for two immediate actions: implement PACS throughout the NHS and extend electronic prescribing to secondary care, which should enhance patient safety. Useful stuff, but hardly earth-shattering.
There is also a list of proposed culture shifts, which should help patient care in the long term. The royal colleges should promote information standards as they currently promote ethical and safety standards. Trust boards should be taught how to implement IT systems. There is the usual call for more professionalism in IT departments. And the relationship between health and social care right should be fixed at the top level.
All of this is worthy, but does not affect me, the patient, here and now. It may do in five years time. I confess to some disappointment. The distinguished writers of the report seem to be giving vent to their frustrations with the current NPfIT, but don't do much to find out what the patient really wants today. They are all clinicians or academics, so no surprise there.
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