All avid 3million lives supporters

Last night I attended a reception at the Institute of Directors following the December publication of the government’s life science strategy and its ‘Innovation, health and wealth’ report.  In attendance we had the Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley, Under Secretary of State for Health Earl Howe, Universities and Science Minister David Willets and the NHS Chief Executive Sir David Nicholson.  It was a fairly informal gathering with key people from the NHS, DH and industry mingling around slapping each other on the back for a job well done on getting so many stakeholders agree on a collaborate way forward to ensure the NHS continues to lead on innovation and quality.

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Technorati Tags: 3million lives, Future Forum, health IT, information for health, Innovation, Intellect Healthcare Programme, joint plan DH and Intellect, NHS, Telehealth

Innovation, Health and Wealth - government's way forward

“We can be proud of our past – but we cannot be complacent about our future. The industry is changing; not just year by year, but month by month. We must ensure that the UK stays ahead…  – we’ve got to change radically – the way we innovate, the way we collaborate, the way we open up the NHS.”

These are the words of Prime Minister David Cameron, who yesterday announced a series of initiatives to respond to the changing nature of healthcare and the health and life science industries. The Department of Health launched the ‘Innovation, Health and Wealth: accelerating adoption and diffusion in the NHS’.

Complementing these reports DH also published the headline findings from the Whole Systems Demonstrator trial, the largest randomised control trial of telehealth and telecare in the UK, and indeed the world.

On the back of these headline findings David Cameron launched a campaign to roll out telehealth across the nation. He told the Independent:

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Technorati Tags: 3 Million Lives, Digital by Default, health IT, Innovation Health and Wealth, intellect, Intellect Healthcare Programme, NHS, NHS Innovation Review, procurement, Telehealth

Today, the National Audit Office (NAO) published its report on how the NHS, supported by the Department of Health, plans to deliver efficiency savings of up to £20 billion by 2014-15.  It’s a quite useful report clarifying a lot of questions that have been on people’s minds:

• how savings targets have been set across individual trusts and other health bodies;
• how those bodies plan to secure the necessary savings locally;
• how the Department and NHS plan to monitor progress; and
• how innovative practice is being shared.

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Technorati Tags: Department of Health, Efficiency savings, health IT, intellect, NHS, QIPP

I think we’re lucky living in a country that has so much to offer the media, we never run out of headline-grabbing stories. I only wished I lived a bit further from work so my commute would be longer, giving me more time to catch up on everything that has happened this week on my non-existent iPad.

We had the May vs Clarke debacle on the pet cat loophole in the EU Human Rights Act that unfortunately turned into more of a story than the actual issues surrounding the EU Human Rights Act vs the Human Rights Bill and the proper debate that it deserves.  Today we’re all waiting to hear about Ed’s women empowered shadow cabinet because apparently women don’t like David Cameron.  I hope there’s more to it than that. (more…)

EHI CCIO Campaign

In July Intellect endorsed the E-Health Insider Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) Campaign. Intellect has long advocated for greater clinical engagement in health IT before even 1997 (worth a read) and all the way to our Information Revolution response in January. After all, clinicians should be the greatest advocates for using information technologies to radically improve the way care is delivered. If clinicians take a greater lead we can be sure the needs of the NHS are met and designed with the front-line in mind. Unfortunately we haven’t reached a level where every clinician can enthusiastically embrace the use of IT in their job every day.

The E-Health Insider CCIO campaign is an important first step to have clinicians leading the IT enabled transformation of the NHS.

Mark Treleaven, Vice Chair Intellect Healthcare Council said: “The value of the clinical champion in delivering successful service transformation by exploiting high quality information and communications technology solutions is well understood by Intellect members. We fully endorse eHealth Insiders CCIO campaign for NHS Trusts to appoint CCIOs and recognise this would be a significant step forward for the NHS, following best practice from other health systems around the world.”

Intellect urges all its 260 healthcare members and stakeholders to endorse the campaign by visiting http://www.ehi.co.uk/campaign/ccio

Technorati Tags: chief clinical information officer, EHI CCIO, health IT

Back in 1997 our predecessors in the CSSA Healthcare Group decided to note down a number of recommendations to improve the state of IT in the NHS that industry had come up with over the years and submit to the NHS Executive. I have pasted these below, and must admit I’m a bit concerned that pretty much every single one is as relevant and urgent today as they were 14 years ago. At least we have been consistent in our recommendations, from the NHS Innovation Review response we submitted this week, to our telehealth paper, Information Revolution response and face-to-face when we meet with our stakeholders we keep pushing the key action points.

In 1997 our Healthcare Group recommended ten key action points to the NHS Executive: (more…)

Intellect has submitted its response (click here) to the NHS Chief Executive Innovation Review led by Sir Ian Carruthers. In it we outline the opportunities and barriers for ICT enabled healthcare. However, we do warn against the NHS focussing too much on “new exciting innovation” – e.g. buying the latest gadget – before it has started to get the basics outlined in this response right. (more…)

Technorati Tags: eHealth, Health Innvoation, health IT, Health transformation, NHS Chief Executive Innovation Review, Sustainable NHS

It must have been hard for anyone keeping up with the news to have avoided all the politicking around the health reforms in recent weeks (well it’s always been a subject for politicking) as the ‘listening exercise’ came to a close. But I think there has been a big omission in these debates that the politicians have yet to fully explore. While the focus has much been on the particularities of the reforms – GP commissioning, competition etc. – the biggest threat, and not the main focus, has only been mentioned in the preludes to speeches and papers. That threat is the crisis facing the NHS in its entirety. In a Radio 4 programme on 05 June 2011, Sir John Oldham and John Appleby (King’s Fund chief economist) outlined the future of a NHS costing close to 30% of GDP over the next 50 years if we provide services they way we do now. This is quite unsustainable, and a re-organisation of the NHS and GBP20 billion savings by 2015 will not be enough, a new social contract may be needed. But we live in the now, so for now we focus on the current reforms…

All three parties have been quite vivacious about these reforms, often overplaying and aggrandising their claims. But it is no surprise that one way or another, most of the proposed reforms have been on the table or even piloted in this country by both the Conservatives and Labour over the last few decades. It’s just that no one has tried to do it all at once. GP commissioning is not new, nor is introducing a bit of competition and private providers, but somehow when the Health & Social Care Bill was introduced in January things started to unravel for health secretary Andrew Lansley.

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Technorati Tags: DH, health IT, intellect, NHS, reforms

Intellect fully believes that the NHS needs modern information communication technologies (ICT) to improve the quality of patient care and to improve the way the NHS plans and delivers services. The NAO report and PAC hearing these last seven days have stirred quite a lot of debate regarding the future of ICT in healthcare. With the challenges facing the NHS we therefore need to demonstrate the benefits of ICT and how to do it right. Intellect is setting out the core principles that should guide the next phase of ICT in healthcare.

Intellect director general John Higgins said Tuesday that health ICT should be locally owned, use proven solutions to achieve the main transformation required, and that the user needs of clinicians and managers are brought in from the beginning.

How to do ICT right in the NHS

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Technorati Tags: Add new tag, Intellect Healthcare, NHS IT

The Source London brand will be as famous as Oyster in a couple of years and London will the Electric Vehicle capital of the world. With over 10 million daily car journeys in London it makes a perfect place to take the lead. That is what delegates at Intellect’s Transport and Smart Grid Conference were told this morning by Kulveer Ranger, the environment and digital advisor to Mayor of London. With eight other regional pilots trialing electric vehicles networks around the country, the UK is leading in the world on rolling out networks for various low carbon vehicles said Michael Hurwitz, the government’s Director for Low Emission Vehicles.

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