Connecting up for efficient healthcare

Investing millions in IT may not appear a priority for a service that exists to heal the sick.

But the National Health Service (NHS) cares for millions of patients who talk to thousands of doctors and go to hundreds of hospitals all over the nation, so it needs to have communication links as advanced as any big business.

To tackle this task, said to be the world's largest civil computer project, the Department of Health has set up a new agency, Connecting for Health.

Some of the improvements it will implement will help the NHS run more efficiently and be invisible to patients.

Others will give the patients the chance to become more involved in their own care.

Information at the touch of a button

One of the first targets for electronic transformation is the paper medical notes system.

The NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) will hold an electronic store of the medical records for every patient in the NHS.

According to one study, ‘Building a safer NHS for patients: Improving Medication Safety, DH, January 2004’, “The root cause of 27 per cent of medication errors is poor information availability.”

With NHS CRS, should a patient fall ill away from home, instead of searching through filing cabinets or trying to locate records from the far side of the country, medical staff will have access to patient records wherever and whenever they are needed.

Further, this information is being made available to the people who care about it most: the patients.

Fred Webber, one such patient who now has his records on CD-ROM, says, “I can check for errors and correct them, I can better understand my own conditions and prepare for any consultations.”

Appointment choice

If a patient needs to see a specialist, a second project, Choose and Book, will give them a say in the timing of their treatment.

Referrals to hospitals can take weeks to arrange by the traditional route where requests and replies are sent by post.

With the new electronic booking service, Choose and Book, patients will be able sit in a doctor’s surgery and book a hospital or clinic outpatient appointment at a date, place and time convenient to them.

Prescription transmission

After consultations and diagnosis, a patient may need a prescription.

Here the introduction of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) will provide quicker and more accurate delivery of medicines.

Pharmacies will no longer have to decipher doctors’ handwriting, so reducing the number of errors.

And the information can be transferred directly to the pharmacy, so there will be less waiting time for patients when they arrive to pick up their prescriptions.

Electronic transfer of X-rays

There are numerous other ways in which IT will help improve patient care.

Electronic image transfer of scans and X-rays will be possible.

And in addition to patient medical records, the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) will store patients’ details such as name, address, date of birth and NHS Number.

This will enable a patient to be readily identified by NHS staff and associated, quickly and accurately, with their correct medical details.

Secure support

Underpinning this change is an overhaul of the NHS communications network. The old network, NHSnet, is being replaced with N3, which provides a fast, broadband networking service.

Over the next decade it is expected to connect over 30,000 doctors in England to almost 300 hospitals.

The implementation of N3 is ahead of schedule at the James Paget NHS Trust where IT manager Michael Scott is seeing the benefits.

He says, “This is definitely speeding up patient care. For the first time we have a full, resilient connection for the national network.”