NHS IT: As the debate continues about its technical
feasibility, the national programme signs a £41m support deal, and
one trust decides to look outside the scheme for
systems
Health minister Caroline Flint has responded to calls by 23 of
the UK's leading computer science academics for a technical audit
of the NHS national programme for IT, by insisting that the project
has made considerable progress.
She said on television that 47% of GPs are already live with
services. She said 1,000 GP practices are now using systems and
200,000 health professionals are registered to use them.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health later confirmed that
this referred to 48% of GPs connected to and using the Choose and
Book hospital appointment systems.
The minister also said there was significant progress in
creating electronic connections between GPs and pharmacists.
But Flint was only talking about two of the NPfIT's six
components. The remaining four areas are NHS Care Records Service,
a new national broadband IT network for the NHS, Picture Archiving
and Communications Systems, IT supporting GP payments, and Contact
- a central e-mail and directory service for the NHS.
Connecting for Health, which runs the NPfIT, maintains that
there has been solid progress on these fronts too.
Commenting on Flint's claims Ewart Carson, professor of system
science at the centre for health informatics, City University and
one of those calling for an independent audit, said the bulk of the
work in the NPfIT lay with the creation of 50 million electronic
health records.
Flint did not refer to this aspect of the programme. "I am
always taken by what is not mentioned," Carson said.
The creation of electronic health records is the most complex
aspect of the programme. In September last year, the Department of
Health attempted to overcome delays by allowing interim, standalone
systems to be rolled out by hospitals that had held off buying
their own systems because of the national programme.
It is unclear how these systems will be connected to the central
data spine as originally intended.
Carson also questioned the figures for GPs using online booking,
since many were still using remote telephone booking services.
Likewise, although there were working pilots on electronic
prescription transfer, the original timetable said phase one of the
system would be rolled out by the end of 2005. This target had
moved to 2007, he said.
"It is a question of how you spin the figures. The reality is
both electronic prescribing and booking are significantly
behind."
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