Keogh outlines priorities for new head of IT

NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh has stepped down as the Department of Health’s interim director general for informatics and handed over to new chief information officer for health, Christine Connelly.

But the architect of surgical outcome reporting in the UK has pledged he will remain involved in NHS informatics. Sir Bruce and Connelly were scheduled to meet yesterday and were expected to discuss the future of health informatics.

Speaking at a lecture in London earlier this week, Sir Bruce said he would raise three issues. The first was the need to focus on the £12.4 billion worth of contracts within the National Programme for IT in the NHS. The second was the need to get the technology right for clinicians who use it.

The third was the need to focus on the patient. “Most importantly, we must not lose sight that the technology is about underpinning the interaction between citizens of this country and health and social care services,” Sir Bruce said in his lecture at a meeting organised by the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death.

He pledged to remain involved with informatics saying: “I will continue to have a role in influencing the direction of travel in informatics.”

During his speech to some of the most senior figures in medicine, Sir Bruce identified IT as one of the key drives for change in the NHS.

He said: “IT has driven change in a way that’s irreversible. The internet and web 2.0 has led to people becoming partners in their care rather than grateful recipients. It brings a different dimension to healthcare and delivery.”

He went on to outline a consultation for the next wave of outcome indicators to be posted on the NHS Choices website. These will go alongside standardised mortality rates for knee and hip replacements and emergency and elective abdominal aortic aneurysm repair uploaded in July 2008.

Sir Bruce admitted that mortality rates were a “blunt measure”, designed to kick start a debate and added: “Chief nurse Christine Beasley and I have written to every trust asking them to send to us measures that they collect already that they felt had merit for assessing quality.”

He declined to outline the types of measures proposed by trusts, but said: “We have had a large number of responses and over the course of the next few weeks will be going out to consultation which we are keen is led by the professions.”

Sir Bruce took on the interim DG role in April 2008, after the previous incumbent, Matthew Swindells, left the NHS to join Tribal Consulting.

Connelly is joined this week by Martin Bellamy, the new director of programme and system delivery. Questions remain as to how the two will carve out their respective roles.