CCIOs need teams – Jonathan Kay

Work to appoint more chief clinical information officers in the NHS is progressing well, but the health service now needs to develop teams of clinical information specialists, NHS England’s clinical informatics director has argued.

Speaking at the second CCIO Leaders Network Annual Conference, running alongside EHI Live 2013, Professor Jonathan Kay told delegates that he wants organisations to “start developing teams of CCIOs, and I want a lot more CCIOs who aren’t doctors.”

He said that the applications process for the Safer Hospitals Safer Wards: Technology Fund has highlighted the extent to which some organisations still do not have cohesive teams on clinical IT projects.

“I was quite concerned about some of the teams that trusts put up,” he revealed. “The ideal trust team was a deputy chief executive, a director of finance, a head of ICT, a CCIO, and a lead consultant or pharmacist.

“But we had some teams that looked like they barely knew each other, or which had IT staff who, when quizzed on clinical benefits, went very quiet.”

EHI’s second annual survey of CCIOs, the results of which were published early this month, revealed that many are starting to work in teams – though often ones they have had to construct themselves.

“The idea of a single individual who is clinically engaged in all IT projects really didn’t last long,” said Mark Simpson, CCIO at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, who spoke at today’s conference as part of a strand gathering the insights of CCIOs on the frontline.

“Originally we had a CCIO alone, line managed by the chief medical officer but with a daily relationship with the director of innovation and IT,” he explained.

“But for that one individual to engage with 8,000 staff was just a concept too far and so over the past two years we’ve formed a team structure.”

That structure means the trust now has a CIO in each of its healthcare groups and this setup will now be mirrored in nursing, following the appointment of a chief nursing information officer Steve Jessop two months ago.

“I wanted to mirror what we got from the CIO setup and make sure we had a strong nursing presence in technology,” explained Mr Jessop. “It’s about strength in numbers,” continued Dr Simpson, “not a lone superhero.”

The same opinion was expressed by Tony Shannon, CCIO at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. “I’m one man, but I wouldn’t be able to deliver without a team,” he said. “We are a team of people trying to change the way we work.”