Introduction from Dr Joe McDonald, chair of the CCIO Network
In the beginning was mumbo jumbo, quackery and snake oil. Two and a half thousand years ago on the island of Kos a visionary leader, tired of watching patients die, decided to take a harder road – to document symptoms and group them into syndromes so that illnesses could be studied, recognised, classified and hopefully cured at some point in the future.
The principles laid down by Hippocrates have served us well down the ages and the advancement of healthcare has been through the rigorous collection of data and its recording.
Two thousand four hundred years later, Florence Nightingale’s collection of mortality data and its display in graphical form gave birth to the modern nursing profession, and healthcare’s first attempts at systematic quality improvement.
More recently, the invention of the computer seemed to promise a new dawn in healthcare informatics. In the late 1960s another visionary, Dr Larry Weed, predicted the end of paper records and the dawn of a new age where records would be structured and machine readable.
It was the first of many false dawns for health IT, the latest and greatest being the National Programme for IT. Although the programme was largely regarded as an embarrassment, it did throw me and a handful of other clinicians in at the IT deep end.
Late in the day, the powers that be realised that clinical engagement was key. Organisations started looking for clinicians able to translate between the IT crowd and the other clinicians.
In the darkest days of the programme, these beleaguered clinicians huddled around an online magazine, eHealth Insider, for glimpses of the truth, for mutual support, and for an opportunity to rage against the machine.
In 2012, EHI launched a campaign to raise the profile of these clinicians, inspired by the emergence of chief medical information officers in the US. The CCIO Leaders Network has grown steadily since, while Digital Health, the new name for EHI, has added further networks to support IT managers and colleagues working in industry.
The members of the CCIO Network have unique and hard won insights. In the Hippocratic tradition, this handbook seeks to pool and share that knowledge. It is intended to be a living resource which will grow over the years, and I thank you in advance for your contributions still to come.
Introduction from Digital Health
For the past three and a half years, eHealth Insider, and now Digital Health, has run a network to encourage and foster clinical involvement in IT and informatics. It has encouraged organisations to appoint chief clinical information officers and provided a way for those in the post to share knowledge and experience.
There are now CCIOs in place in NHS organisations across the country. But we are aware there are many more clinicians who are interested in developing CCIO roles, or simply in finding out more about making clinical informatics a formal part of their careers. There are also individuals who are just starting out in their CCIO career.
While the role has grown hugely since we founded the network, the reality is that CCIO remains a relatively new role in the UK. We have therefore put together this handbook to share knowledge, expertise and practical experience.
All the chapters within it are written by people who hold a formal clinical informatics role at an NHS organisation. The result is a practical, encouraging and supportive handbook which is the first entirely UK-specific guide to being a CCIO or clinical informatics professional.
We hope you find it helpful.
Jon Hoeksma, chief executive and editor, Digital Health Intelligence Limited
Claire Read, editor, CCIO Network Handbook