We should talk - Interoperability and the NHS

Published: September 2011
Type: Report
Area: Healthcare

Introduction
Interoperability is in some ways the same as house construction in the current market: everybody agrees that we need it but there’s not much actually happening. And every central initiative starts off promisingly but peters out in an atmosphere of mutual blame, or worse, indifference. The NHS, through the National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT), has for the past eight years been trying to ensure that systems interoperate. This programme has had limited success with the NHS still hosting a plethora of legacy systems, most of which are isolated and do not share vital patient information – they do not interoperate.

Against this background, NHS Connecting for Health (part of the Department of Health Informatics Directorate) has developed a new solution to the interoperability challenge: the NHS Interoperability Toolkit (ITK). Intellect welcomes this initiative and the fresh technical approaches that it brings. However, Intellect also fears that ITK’s success may be severely limited by some of the not-so-fresh aspects of the approach, especially those associated with education, investment, engagement and inclusion.

Unless these are improved there is a danger that ITK will go the same way as other central initiatives: technically sound, but not able to convince the market, the Trusts as customers and IT companies as sellers, that it is worth the investment.

The We should talk - Interoperability and the NHS paper summarises what ITK is from industry’s point of view and the benefits it should bring. It then shows how it may still fail unless the market view of it changes, and how Intellect, Connecting for Health and the NHS should work together to ensure its success.

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