A representative of the Capital Care Consortium, the BT-led
consortium which has been appointed the local service provider for
NHSIT to London, told the Barbican conference that the national
programme was "essentially a change management programme with IT
elements".
BT said that by the end of June this year the company was due to
deliver a single sign-on so that doctors and nurses would need to
log on to systems only once a day. The company would also deliver a
portal - a common user interface - through which clinicians and
others would be able to access the care records service and
electronic booking of appointments.
The new systems will have, potentially, more than 49 million users.
The e-booking system will allow thousands of appointments to be
booked per hour.
By the end of this year a new national data spine would hold a
summary of a patient's demographic details. The systems will
validate addresses, and a national directory will hold details of
roles, permissions and authorisations of NHS staff who will be able
to access e-booking and patient records.
Testing of the spine development work is due this month and an
initial launch of the spine and e-booking service is planned for 30
June .
Access to central records of patient information is due to go
online before the end of this year.