DH wants ISO equivalent for health information

The Department of Health is looking for an organisation to run a scheme to accredit health and social care information in England.

It has issued a tender for a “fully managed service” to apply a national health and social information standard to information production systems. It hopes this will do for them “what ISO did for business management systems.”

The tender says the DH is looking for three things: a standard that defines the information production system an organisation uses to produce information; certification procedures leading to the award of a quality mark; and support for organisations to attain and retain the mark.

The tender also says quality mark will “provide a nationally recognised way to reassure people that the information they access is from a reliable source.”

Finding a way to “kite-mark” healthcare information has been a pre-occupation of health policy makers, worried that people will fail to find “reliable” information in a mass of search engine results.

The tender says the new service will directly support the national policy of tailoring services to the preferences of patients, and that it is particularly important in the context of Lord Darzi’s review of the NHS, which emphasised the need to make new types of information available to support quality and choice.

The DH suggests there are about 50,000 organisations in England producing healthcare information and that interest in the new scheme is “high” – but that participation in the new scheme will be encouraged by subsidies for a limited period.

The new scheme is due to start next August. The value of the tender is estimated at between £3m and £6.5m, but the DH hopes the scheme will develop as a “self sustaining business model.”

Meanwhile, steps are being taken to rationalise government health information sites. The NHS’s two main, national websites, NHS Choices and NHS Direct, will join forces to provide a comprehensive “front door” to online health information services from the end of October.

“By integrating the online services of NHS Direct and NHS Choices, the NHS will have the most comprehensive online health information service available anywhere,” says a note on the NHS Direct website.

The sites will use the www.nhs.uk web address. NHS Direct will continue to provide a telephone service on 0845 4647 for the public and patients.

Link

Management of a scheme to accredit health and social care information