Member Article

A Paperless NHS Is The Right Route

SynApps Solutions’ Gary Britnell looks at how the UK health IT community has responded to an off-the-cuff remark made by the government about NHS paperless goals

At the beginning of the year, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt faced urgent questions from the House of Commons after a report in the Guardian newspaper discovered that 709,000 letters sent between GPs and hospitals for the five years to 2016 had been lost.

Despite it being the worst case of lost clinical data in the history of the Health Service, there was little furor. Jeremy Hunt accepted the severity of the breach, but said that patient health had not been compromised.

This came on the back of news that despite previous promises, the NHS 2018 paperless target now seems unrealistic. Speaking to a select committee on NHS sustainability, Hunt said: “I have made big, bold statements about it. I perhaps rather bravely said I wanted the NHS to be paperless by 2018 in my first few months as Health Secretary, and I am quite relieved that most people seem to have forgotten that I made that promise”.

Unfortunately for Hunt, the vast majority of Health Trust CIOS swallowed what Hunt said hook, line and sinker. The paperless NHS has always been high on Hunt’s agenda and only last year he announced that he had received an extra £4 billion from the Treasury to help with the project.

A paperless NHS will come with a large number of practitioner/patient benefits, including the ability to route information without re-keying or asking the patient the same questions, easier collation of big data for better analysis, programmatic research – and so the list goes on. All of which would be extremely valuable to a budget constrained health service.

The need for paperless hasn’t been forgotten

Despite the slipping dates and Hunt’s procrastination, at least the paperless concept hasn’t been forgotten altogether. It has just been pushed out further, whilst seemingly more important initiatives such as NHS England’s Digital Exemplar scheme takes centre stage.

We have to be positive here, despite Hunt’s back track on paperless targets. 2018 will be a realistic target for some ambitious Trusts who are on target. For others 2020 plus is a more prudent date.

So the best response to the Health Secretary poorly expressed views about this core target is to look at the great progress to paperless made despite the regrettable paper records loss.

Practical techniques such as the integrated digital care record (IDCR), for example, is emerging as an excellent way to deliver against the Paperless NHS objectives. The Integrated Digital Care Record Programme for Bradford, Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven, for example, will be one of the first districts in England to join up its residents’ health and social care information.

Don’t forget targets

The IDCR approach definitely needs some momentum behind it. The Bradford and Airedales are few and far between. There are technologies available that can help with IDCR projects, and more in the pipeline.

Unfortunately the guidance given by Wachter and the concept behind paperless is open, interoperable systems. Much of what is on offer, however is closed. Creating data silos can’t move the huge amount of data and data types needed for a quality IDCR, such as path test results, DICOM format scans, referral notes, social care records.

The NHS simply can’t afford any more data loss. Neither can it languish in archaic paper based processes forever. What is needed is an open, standards based partnership-driven approach backed by proven clinical content management technology that can make a paperless NHS a reality. This is hardly complex and something we don’t want the Health Secretary to forget!

The author is Head of the Healthcare Practice at SynApps Solutions (http://www.synapps-solutions.com/), a specialist in the delivery of advanced content management solutions to the NHS

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Gary Britnell .