Following the end of £12billion NHS National Programme for IT and the opening up of the market, NHS trusts are pursuing diverse strategies in order to develop electronic patient records systems, a new report reveals.
Research from EHI Intelligence details how since the programme was scrapped in 2011 and with a move away from nationally-specified and purchased systems, a far more vibrant and diverse picture is evolving in a market that could be worth £2.7billion over the next five years.
Entitled Routes to EPR, the report details how hospital trusts across England are now developing and pursuing a variety of strategies based on differing local needs, clinical and strategic priorities, historic IT investments and technology choices. These range from £200m state-of-the-art fully-integrated electronic patient record (EPR) systems, to integration and portal approaches and innovative open-source developments.
The report provides a unique set of profiles showing the steps that trusts have taken to develop EPRs and the progress they have made
EHI analysts conducted indepth interviews with IT directors and other senior IT managers at 10% of the acute trusts in England.
The report includes detailed profiles of 16 trusts involved in the research, as well as their future strategic plans and the benefits they expect to achieve.
It shows that trusts are taking very different approaches to EPR. Some, including Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, are using a single supplier. Others are either using a core suite of software from one supplier alongside specialist systems from others, or ‘portal’ software to join disparate systems.
The research is particularly timely given the May launch of the new £260m Digital Innovation Fund, made available by NHS England to help trusts accelerate their development of electronic records and technologies that underpin patient safety, such as e-Prescribing.
The fund is intended to support Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt’s, commitment that the NHS will become paperless by 2018. As a first step towards that aim, trusts must have plans for implementing electronic records in place by April 2014. NHS England will publish guidance on these plans at the start of July.
The Routes to EPR report also reveals that trusts are looking to create as integrated a suite of systems as possible, regardless of whether they use one supplier or many, and are aiming to reduce the number of systems to which this is interfaced.
Many also aim to add systems to support clinicians in making prescribing and clinical decisions, as well as share information with GPs and, eventually, patients.
IT directors are pragmatists. They have been trying to achieve aims similar to those now being promoted by Hunt and NHS England for several years and have a realistic view of the problems to be overcome; as well as the benefits to be achieved
Lead author, EHI Intelligence senior analyst, SA Mathieson, said: “The report provides a unique set of profiles showing the steps that trusts have taken to develop EPRs and the progress they have made.
“The strategies outlined in this report would generate many of the benefits that the Government has cited, in terms of making healthcare easier to access, more efficient, safer, and better information-based.
“However, the IT directors that we spoke to are pragmatists. They have been trying to achieve aims similar to those now being promoted by Hunt and NHS England for several years and have a realistic view of the problems to be overcome; as well as the benefits to be achieved.”
For more information about the report, click here.