Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust is
embarking on a major integration programme to link 650 medical
applications. The move will bring together financial, corporate and
clinical data, together with voice, video and images.
The initiative is one of several undertaken by a group of
research hospital trusts including St James in Leeds, and
Coventry and Warwickshire, which are not prepared to wait for
systems to be developed under the NHS's National Programme for IT
(NPfIT).
Speaking at the IT Directors Forum on board the cruise ship
Arcadia this week, Richard Storey, head of IT and solutions
delivery at Guy's and St Thomas', said that the highly innovative
programme was not working against the NPfIT.
"We will not step outside the National Programme, but what we
are doing is one step ahead. We are well ahead of the NPfIT and we
will not do anything to compromise it, but we will not be held
back," he said.
The programme will use
service oriented
architecture with a heavy focus on interoperability. Data is
shared using an enterprise service bus and is converted to the
medical data sharing standard, HL7 standard version 3.0. This
allows Guy's to link to developments taking place in the other
hospitals using open standards.
Benefits will include single sign on and a contextualised
portal, with a core scheduling system and clinical images available
on the desktop.
Because of Guy's central location, Storey is targeting City IT
professionals to work on the project. "We cannot compete on
salaries, but City people join us for the opportunities to work
with SOA and other technologies that are not always readily
available to them."
More about the
NPfIT >>
Stakeholder management key fo IT project success say experts
>>
Portillo talks management at the IT Directors
Forum >>
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust: IT strategy 2006
>>
IT Directors Forum
>>
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