The hunt is on for IT professionals to help to deliver the largest
technology project ever seen in the UK. James Rogers looks at some
of the job opportunities offered as part of the strategy to
overhaul NHS IT
Few IT professionals can claim to have worked on a project that
touches the lives of millions of people, or, indeed, an initiative
that has been described as "the IT challenge of the decade".
Last year the Government launched Delivering 21st Century IT
Support for the NHS, its long-term plan to build a modern
technology infrastructure across the NHS, which is one of the
largest and most complex organisations in the world.
The recruitment push to provide the IT expertise behind the
strategy has now begun, with the Department of Health recently
advertising for a range of positions based in Leeds and Birmingham
to help to underpin the national programme. The successful
candidates will be employed by the NHS Information Authority, an
authority established to improve patient care and provide national
products, services and standards for information in the health
service.
As predicted in Computer Weekly last year, the Government's focus
on NHS IT should spell good news for IT professionals. The recently
advertised vacancies, which included project leaders, project
managers, and heads of programme, are a timely boost to an IT jobs
market which has been in recession since the dotcom bubble burst.
Salaries quoted for the roles range from £19,000 to £30,000 for
project leaders, project support analysts and project support
officers, up to £70,000 for heads of programme. However, Martin
Sexton, director of IT at systems integration specialist London
Market Systems, warned that top IT professionals may expect higher
salaries. He said, "It is encouraging to see that the Government is
creating new jobs at the time of recession although one has to ask,
at the salaries quoted, will they attract the best calibre of
staff?"
The Department of Health said it was unable to talk about these
specific vacancies and the health service's wider IT recruitment
strategy, but said more information would available shortly.
However, Ted Woodhouse, director of IT at the Leeds Teaching
Hospitals NHS trust, which is the UK's largest Trust, highlighted
some of the skills that are currently in demand in the health
service. He said, "There is a range of different skills being asked
for on several different levels in different areas of IT at the
moment - if there are IT professionals that have those skills then
this could be an opportunity for them to both help themselves and
help the country improve its health service.
"These skills are likely to be in project management, project
implementation as well as systems analysis and interfacing."
Woodhouse warned, however, that change management skills will be
even more critical over the coming years as the health service
develops its mammoth IT upgrade.
He said, "I hope that they will devote a large proportion of
resources to recruiting and allocating change management skills to
assist trusts in managing the business process changes and
re-engineering necessary." In reality only 20% of the effort is IT
related - 80% is associated with implementing process change,
Woodhouse added.
It is clear, nonetheless, that one of the major selling points of
this recruitment drive is the sheer scale of the new NHS IT
strategy, which has been described by the health department as the
most strategically important IT programme in Europe. Certainly, IT
professionals are being offered the chance to become part of a
unique scheme designing an IT infrastructure for an organisation
with more than a million employees, serving the UK's 60 million
population.
The NHS is also keen to shake off its reputation as something of a
technology backwater. Successful candidates could find themselves
working on some of the cutting edge IT initiatives that the NHS
plans to implement over the coming years. These range from
electronic health records to applications for booking appointments
electronically. Long-term objectives of the overall strategy also
include providing broadband access to all NHS clinicians and
support staff, as well as implementation of domain-to-domain
encryption.
Public sector IT expenditure is growing at a time when technology
spending in other sectors of the economy has slowed down
dramatically. Indeed, health service sources have suggested that
the Government is likely to devote in the region of £2.35bn to
delivering the new NHS IT strategy over the next three years. A
spokeswoman for the Department of Health, however, was unable to
confirm this amount although she said that the exact figure will be
"coming out shortly".
With such resources available, IT professionals can look forward to
more jobs becoming available in the NHS during the current drought
in career opportunities elsewhere. Whether they are ready to take
up the challenge in an organisation where IT has often been second
to clinical priorities is another matter.