HSCIC strategy focuses on integration

The Health and Social Care Information Centre’s strategy for 2013-15 puts a new emphasis on the need to support integration between health and social care.

The centre’s draft strategy was released for consultation last October. The final version goes into further detail about its plans to publish a national technology and data strategy in summer 2015, which will also have a strong emphasis on integration.

NHS England was due to publish a national technology strategy in December 2013, but this was put back to March 2014, when the Informatics Services Commissioning Group was also expected to publish a national strategy. However, EHI has learned that both of these are now likely to be published in June.

The HSCIC says it will work with its partners on its own national strategy. This will aim to “minimise any barriers to the ?ow of that data and information between care settings, so supporting both the integration of services and the ability of individuals to manage their own care.”

The strategy will “set out a coherent architecture for technology and data services for the new health and care system” and be supported by workstreams focusing on supporting integrated care, reducing barriers to interoperability, and addressing the information governance issues that are affecting health and care commissioners.

The HSCIC strategy for 2013-15 says it will review the portfolio of national services such as the Spine and N3, paying attention to the need to support integration across health and social care.

“Much of the current infrastructure provision is aimed only at the NHS. This is no longer adequate for the public or for clinicians and care professionals, as they work increasingly across organisational boundaries, and especially as we anticipate the provisions of the Care Bill,” it says.

The HSCIC will set up a programme to help system providers, starting with the social care system providers, gain access to the national infrastructure, based on the use of the NHS Number.

Under the title, ‘developing the information marketplace’ the HSCIC says it will initiate a programme to introduce application programming interfaces into key national infrastructure, to “ensure greater interoperability between national systems and between national systems and peripheral applications.”

By March 2015, the HSCIC will also “develop and publish for consultation a ten-year strategic technology futures framework that majors on integration across social care into healthcare services, ensures that there is greater use of cloud technologies, open source, and other new developments, as well as increased use of standards for interoperability.”