Board to advise on clincians' needs

The National Clinical Advisory Board (NCAB) will help the National Programme for NHS IT ensure its modernisation agenda can best benefit patients, according to chairman Professor Peter Hutton.

The group's members are drawn from 30 branches of the health service including GPs, consultants and pharmacists. It met for the first time last week and will make strategic recommendations to the National Programme based on meetings every three months.

The agenda will be set over time by board members' recommendations but initial discussions will focus on issues such as patient consent and identification, says Hutton.

'Our brief is to make sure the objectives of the National Programme are in line with the NHS general objectives of improving care using a patient-centred model,' he told Computing.

'We are in the business of putting flesh on the bones of the strategy and setting up groups that will interact with the programme.'

Critics of the £2.3bn IT plan say that it lacks support from clinical staff.

Hutton, who is also chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, says countering this perception was one of the motivations for setting up the board.

'There has been quite a bit of clinical input but because of the commercial needs of the programme a certain amount of that has not been in public domain and the usual model of consulting with professional bodies in medicine has not been used,' he said.

'Now we are over the first phase of the procurement it is an appropriate time for the wider clinical community to become involved in setting targets and discussing issues.'

NCAB members have two functions, says Hutton.

'One is to tell us what their speciality area would like to get from better use of information, and the other is to hear what other groups would like and take part in a corporate decision-making process about priorities.'