I think the NHS has a collective brain-box the size of a planet, but we still can't seem to decide about IT and the stuff, elsewhere, we take for granted?
Buy a book from Amazon; they'll remember you for the rest of your life... know what you like, suggest goodies and deliver the same day.
How do they do that?
Go to hospital; everyone you meet will ask you who you are, your date of birth and what you've had for breakfast.
Why do they do that?
If I need a repeat prescription why can't I get it on-line and have it delivered by Amazon?
What's stopping us doing that?
I'll tell you. It's the Irish joke; 'How do I get to Tipperary? Answer; 'I wouldn't start from here...'
We are bolting on IT when we should be welding it in. There are five things we need to think about.
1 Back to Front
'Technology' should not be thought of as just a back-office function. Spreadsheets, forecasts, modelling, HR stuff, wages and all that. That said, why every Trust needs a full blown finance and HR department is a mystery to me. Huge chunks of duplication and routine work are crying out to be syndicated. That is simple and called cost-cutting.
There is much, much more.
We must realise IT can generate revenues by linking it to the patient experience.
Routine discussions, Apps, prescriptions, Cloud services, mobile devices, monitoring are all possible but largely missing.
US biz-mag Information Week reported nearly half of companies put IT led products and services in their top 3 priorities for growth and development.
What is the NHS default position?
2 Data Later
We still don't really get the idea that data captured from patients' past experiences can inform better care in the future.
We play blindfold darts; throwing care and hope it hits the board, never mind the bull's-eye.
When we know why people get sick, we stand more than half a chance to stop a repeat. Aligning care, clinicians and information; figuring out what happened, why, what worked, how much did it cost and do we want it again? Makes sense to me.
3 No telescopic sight.
'What do we want IT to do?' NHS answer; 'Everything'. Start again; what are our three priorities? If we can't spell them out, in English, we can't expect clinicians, managers and budget makers to align with them and make them work.
We don't need every toy in the box. We want three (no more) things to make it easier and safer for patients to: Get in; Get Diagnosed; Get Fixed up; Get Out; and Get on with their lives.
What are the 3 things? (Write a 500 word guest editorial for us and we'll publish the best.)
4 Security Allergies.
Yes, it is important and there will be well intended people who will resist. However, if we applied the resistance to healthcare data modelling to banking we'd still be queuing at the counter and writing cheques.
What's the chance of winning over the public with words like 'pseudonymised'? What's Mr & Mrs John English supposed to make of that? A description of a citizen from a place mentioned in the Bible's Book of Jude, maybe?
Security is not an after-thought to be dumped on the IT department; it's all our jobs. Make a simple IT promise, mean it and keep it.
We promise to look after your data as though it were our own family's and use it to make healthcare better for all our families
... that'll do for starters.
5 End-2-End
IT should be like the stripe in the tooth-paste; end to end. Hire the best IT professionals we can find, put them on the board but throw away the key to their office. They need to be evangelists and peripatetic.
If the NHS were a new start-up it would integrate the management of information by the use of technology, from the off. Too late for that; we are where we are. The last bureaucracy of its type in the world. We have size and scale on our side but it is a mixed blessing.
If NHS IT really is 'all about the patient' what is the narrative?
With the careful use of IT and your data we can make your care quicker, safer and make the money go further?
If that's it... let's say it?
One more important thing; our solution has to be in the understanding that almost all improvements come from making things simpler.
We must celebrate what we want to see more of. We just have to decide what it is.