Merseyside creates clinical IT ops group

Informatics Merseyside has set up an operational group of clinical IT leads to drive the informatics agenda across the Merseyside health economy.

Dr Jude Mahadanaarachchi was appointed chief clinical information officer at Informatics Merseyside in May last year. He is a full-time GP and the first CCIO at a health informatics service.

Speaking at the Ilinks Innovator conference in Liverpool this month, he shared his belief that all organisations should have a CCIO, whether big or small.

Informatics Merseyside has a stakeholder group involving directors of its partner organsiations.

Sitting underneath that in an advisory role there is now a working group of around 20 clinical IT leads, including from acute trusts, mental and community health providers and clinical commissioning groups.

Some are officially CCIOs, while others are doing a similar role on an informal basis.

The group held its first meeting last month.

Dr Mahadanaarachchi said it was proving difficult to get everyone in one room at the same time and the HIS was looking to use video conferencing for future meetings.

He said it was easy for individual people and organisations to do things without having a holistic overview of the health economy.

“I’m excited by the operational group because it’s coming up with some big issues like clinical/information governance that we need to tackle,” he explained.

“If you put the patient at the centre how do you share information? Who holds it and how do you share that and where are the assurances and governance around that?

“If you can get it to work across the whole system and everyone is responsible then some of the risks and concerns might actually be addressed.”

Dr Mahadanaarachchi said the forum also acted as a great support for “like-minded clinicians”.

Informatics Merseyside deputy director of commissioning and research and development Kate Warriner said the role of the operational group was to set the informatics agenda year on year.

“We are hoping that the operational group really hold the agenda and have a joint clinical and informatics drive forwards,” she said.

Warriner added that a key piece of work involving mapping all the good initiatives already implemented at the various stakeholder organisations and further exploiting that potential.