White paper outlines IT role in community services

Patients will be able to complete an online self-assessment of their health and send it electronically to their GP to be stored as part of their record, under plans outlined in this week’s white paper on care outside hospital.

The white paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services, outlines a range of proposals for developing use of IT in primary and community care including a large-scale demonstration project on how technology can reduce hospital admissions, the piloting of a joint health and social care electronic record and the development of the Quality and Outcomes Framework.

A cornerstone of the Department of Health’s proposals is a focus on prevention and empowering patients to take care of their own health. To achieve this the white paper says an NHS “Life Check” will be offered to every citizen.

This will be available online, through HealthSpace, the internet site which is eventually designed to offer patients access to their summary record on the NHS Care Records Service. It will also be available on paper for those without internet access. Patients will be able to complete information covering a range of risk factors as well as details of their family history and store the information online.

The white paper adds that patients will “have the option to share their assessment electronically with their general practice surgery. It can then be held as part of their electronic care record to help inform health professionals about the lifestyle risks and family history factors that may affect their long-term health and well-being.”

Those whose initial self-assessment indicates that they are at significant risk of poor health will be able to discuss the results with a ‘health trainer’. NHS Life Check will be developed and evaluated in 2006-7 with the aim of wider rollout after that.

However the white paper rules out the idea that patients should carry their medical records on their own smartcards which it says will not be necessary since the existing proposals for access to medical records through the NCRS will offer the same benefits.

The white paper adds: “Having smartcards would require new technology to read the information contained on the card and there would also be occasions when people did not have the card with them when they needed treatment. Our existing approach offers more flexibility.”

Another key part of the white paper outlines plans for a demonstration project, covering at least a million people in a variety of locations, to look at how technology can be developed to keep patients out of hospital and in the community.

The white paper says: “We need to provide credible evidence that it will benefit the individual and their carer’s quality of life and deliver gains in cost-effectiveness of care.”

The Department of Health adds that it will work with NHS Connecting for Health and NHS Direct to develop the project which will also provide an opportunity to pilot a shared health and social care record. The aim is to begin the project by the end of 2006 and report on early findings by the end of 2008.

Other IT-related projects highlighted in the white paper include proposals to work with CfH to improve the existing national population-based immunisation reporting system, to provide support to PCTs to introduced computerised cognitive behaviour therapy and to develop the Quality and Outcomes Framework by 2008/9 to focus on health outcomes.

Links

Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services