London councils watching success of information sharing project

A computer system piloted by Tower Hamlets council for care of the elderly could soon be adopted by authorities across London.

The electronic Single Assessment Process (eSap) for the elderly is designed to link local social services, hospitals and mental health trusts on a single system to share information and reduce paperwork.

Tower Hamlets is the first local authority in London to adopt eSap, and is being watched closely by other boroughs.

So far the pilot, carried out with a CSW-supplied system, has linked Tower Hamlets social services with the local primary care trust and the City Mental Health Trust. It has been a great success, says eSap project manager, Polly Wicks.

'eSap is designed to create a seamless service, which means we can stop pestering our clients, asking them the same questions over and over again, because information is shared between the different organisations,' she said.

'Also, as a web-enabled system we can access it 24 hours a day, so any time information is needed it can be retrieved.'

As a result, elderly people receive the treatment they need in a timely fashion, says Wicks.

A review by Connecting for Health, the agency responsible for the NHS IT programme, found that many eSap implementations across the country lacked integration between local authority social service systems and NHS trusts.

Social services departments have often been more enthusiastic about eSAP than health trusts who have been distracted by the NHS National Programme for IT, says Anna Smallwood, consultant at local government user group Socitm.

'The NHS trusts have been less engaged than one would hope,' she said.

'These systems were supposed to be up and running by the end of 2004, but there simply hasn't been the means there to get them in place,' she said.

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