Integrated care pilots urged to test integrated IT

Health and social care providers planning to bid for the Department of Health’s integrated care pilots should be expected to include integrated record systems in their bids, the NHS Alliance has recommended.

In a new paper, Integrated Care Organisations: the importance of integrated information systems, the Alliance says that both the DH and individual primary care trusts should make sure integrated systems are part of the selection criteria.

At the same time, NHS Connecting for Health needs to make sure the National Programme for IT in the NHS can deliver support to local ICOs, the paper states.

It adds that integrated IT systems should operate seamlessly across primary, community, acute and social care boundaries; link to chronic disease registries; and provide embedded clinical protocols that produce real-time alerts and reminders at the patient level.

The report, written by IT specialist and healthcare management consultant David Kwo and Dr Minoo Irani, the NHS Alliance lead for specialist working in primary care, looks at the systems in use by Kaiser Permanente in the US and compares them with UK systems.

Kwo, CfH’s former regional implementation director for London, said integrated information systems would enable clinicians to work in virtual teams to deliver patient care across different care settings.

He added: “They are particularly important in chronic care and in treating patients with co-morbidity because they allow clinicians and managers to generate complex information to drive commissioning, outcomes measurement and research.”

Kwo and Dr Irani have identified the technical options for developing integrated information systems for local ICOs, which the NHS Alliance says will be described in a subsequent paper.

More information:

Copies of Integrated Care Organisations: the importance of integrated information are available from the NHS Alliance: 01777 869080 or office@nhsalliance.org.