Forrest answers NPfIT communication concerns

Martyn Forrest, Regional Implementation Director (RID) for the North East cluster and acting RID for London, has promised to look into concerns about communication between local and national implementation structures.

Speaking at the Health and Social Care Exchange conference in London this week, Forrest also promised to look into audience concerns that solutions to implementation problems were not being shared nationwide, and that a risk existed of inadvertently localising installations.

Forrest said that communication between implementation teams and the national programme was ongoing as key staff were sitting on the board. But he hinted that some kind of central assistance may be forthcoming in implementing Choose and Book. "The DH are fully aware of the challenges of doing this and are taking steps to help. I’m not privy to the debate but I do know that a few things are being considered."

One issue raised was the number of updates to the system that were being received. Forrest said there would now only be an average of two per year: "We need to limit the number of changes that we are making to the new applications."

On another topic, the North East RID expressed a degree of exasperation with the PACS contract saga continuing in his cluster.

"Getting to a PACS contract has been a frustration as we have been at this now since last autumn," he said. "It’s not for want of trying."

"PACS is a frustration in my cluster as we have don’t have a contract," he continued. "We don’t have contractual closure with this but I hope we will in the next few weeks."

"It stands up for itself, PACS, but we seem to be making a real struggle of implementing PACS across the country," said Forrest, adding that people tended to get bogged down and that it was a very quick ‘win’ for the National Programme for IT.

One local lead in the North East, who heard Forrest’s speech, told E-Health Insider that he agreed that more, realistic communication needed to occur, but that openness and honesty needed to come out between end suppliers and users.

Other announcements made by Forrest include the implementation this week of an electronic record update system that will allow emergency service staff to update records on the scene of the incident.

Forrest added that decision support systems for clinicians had an important place in healthcare IT, as long as they weren’t intrusive: "When we are building these new systems we should design them in the right way. If you use decision support appropriately you can detect quite a difference. If you don’t design this right and you get inappopriate warnings, we lose the opportunity."

"We are now going to see a real ramp up of the implemenation of Choose and Book," promised Forrest. "We found we have got a real appetite for taking this forward."