Blair says information vital for ‘personalised’ services

While suppliers and health IT professionals gathered in Harrogate this week in London Prime Minister Tony Blair set out the central role that information and technology must play in re-shaping public services.

On monday the Prime Minister called for "truly personalised" services, with citizens provided with the information and power needed to choose a hospital or school.

Announcing the details of a new policy review of public services by the Number 10 Delivery Unit he said that in order to help "empower" people, hospital and school league tables may be expanded to include satisfaction ratings like on eBay.

The review calls for services to be more tailored to the needs of individuals, and for them to be based around the principal of choice.

Better technology is identified as essential to allow patients to book appointments at more convenient times and choose to have operations at the location most convenient to them.

Other proposals include expanding the number of NHS "walk-in" centres, especially in under doctored areas, and opening surgeries in evenings and at weekends.

Other ideas set out in the review include telling people what the cost of health services are, such as a visit to a GP surgery, in order to encourage people to be "more prudent" in their use of services. Providing such details of the cost of treatments and use of NHS services currently falls outside the scope of the NHS IT programme.

The latest policy ambitions on public services served to illustrate the extent to which the NHS IT programme is facing new pressures to better support policy objectives around access commissioning of services and measuring costs. Connecting for Health is already under pressure to adapt to provide information and systems to support the 18 week wait targets and Practice based Commissioning.