NHS IT needs more clinician engagement

The £6bn National Programme for NHS IT (NPfIT) is moving in the right direction but needs to engage more with ordinary clinicians, according to the BCS.

The Radical Strides draft consultation produced by the BCS health informatics forum says there are still ‘fundamental ignorances of what the new solutions are intended to address’. It also says benefits to be gained from the new systems are patchy.

‘While the programme is going in the right direction, the first phase is only producing benefits for some of the sites involved, particularly those that had no previous patient administration system,’ says the draft report.

‘Those who were well ahead and had high expectations of what the new strategy would bring them are, in the main, still disappointed.’

Connecting for Health (CfH), the organisation running NPfIT, has been criticised for not communicating with NHS staff. The situation is improving, but the BCS report says that more work needs to be done.

‘There are increasing numbers of clinicians involved in the CfH programme, but they rapidly become divorced from the grass-roots requirements and issues unless wider consultation is ongoing,’ says the report.

‘A major requirement is to easily access information about the current national status of the programme, plans and content across the board.’

And this communication needs to emphasise the programme’s benefits.

‘The impact of CfH should be expressed in value of service improvements; for example, reduced waiting times, efficacious prescribing and innovative professional development,’ says the report.

A spokesman for CfH said: ‘There is no doubt that we are building momentum, but we know we have more work to do.’