Lord Darzi’s report was blistering, especially about how capital spending has been managed for the last decade:
The NHS has been starved of capital and the capital budget was repeatedly raided to plug holes in day-to-day spending … too little [investment in] digital technology to support its workforce.
The Prime Minister wasted no time in responding:
So hear me when I say this. No more money without reform. …
Three fundamental reforms, …
First, moving from an analogue to a digital NHS. …
Second, we’ve got to shift more care from hospitals to communities. …
third … we’ve got to be much bolder in moving from sickness to prevention. …
How will ‘no more money without reform’ work? The Prime Minister said:
we can make long-term investments in new technologies …
It will take a ten-year plan. Not the work of just one Parliament.
The ten year plan is expected next spring, after the autumn budget and probably too late for the annual planning round. Digital technology will then be competing with a £12 billion backlog maintenance bill plus chronic underinvestment in other equipment. In short: English trusts should not hold their breath for an investment on the scale of Blair’s National Programme for IT.
Yet there is a way through.
Data from the existing menagerie of IT systems can be unified. That unification can cross departments and hospitals, linking pathways out into the community. At ICB level, that unified data can feed public health intelligence that spans the patient journey through the NHS and independent sector. It’s a ‘no regrets’ approach because it also provides much-needed continuity when the rest of the IT estate gets updated over time.
The technology exists, and it is not expensive.
The key is to completely standardise the structure and meaning of data from every source, so that complexity does not multiply every time a new system is integrated. This is extremely challenging to do properly, but Insource have done it, and have a long track record of doing it across the UK. Our expertise spans the NHS and independent sector, the acute, community and mental health sectors, and functional systems beyond patient administration.
So you could wait for the ten year plan, a ‘fiscal event’, the guidance and initiatives that will follow, and then manage the disruption of changing core IT systems. Or you could get ahead of the game now. Drop us a line, and we’ll be happy to map out your journey to a more integrated digital future.
