£260m tech fund approved

The £260m ‘Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards’ Technology Fund has been approved by Treasury.

Letters will now start going out to trusts to let them know if they have been successful.

NHS England director of strategic systems and technology, Beverley Bryant, tweeted EHI this morning to say the first round of funding has been approved and letters will be sent to trusts from today.

EHI understands that a formal statement regarding the fund will be made by health secretary Jeremy Hunt in January.

An announcement of allocations from the fund was originally due by the end of October, but has been delayed due to stringent Treasury demands regarding return on investment for the projects.

Approval has also been linked to today’s Autumn Statement announcement by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.

IT directors and suppliers had expressed concern about the tight timescales to get the first £90m of the fund spent by April 2014. They agreed that an announcement would have to be made by the first week of December to allow projects to get procured and off the ground.

The fund was first announced by Hunt in May. A document released in July said the key areas NHS England was looking to promote via the funding were: adoption of the NHS Number as the primary identifier in the health service; integrated digital care records including information sharing within and between organisations; e-prescribing; and advanced scheduling.

Bryant told attendees at EHI Live 2013 last month that £20m of the fund is also likely to go towards open source projects.

Three sites are also set to become exemplars in digital record integration between health and social care by March 2015, with support from the fund.

JAC chief executive Robert Tysall-Blay said everyone is delighted to hear that the money has finally been approved.

“This is a great initiative. It’s going to allow trusts and suppliers to really engage and progress digitising healthcare, in particular in areas we are involved in which is e-prescribing.

“A lot of applicants as well as those ‘in flight’ projects were waiting to see the outcome of this and are now hopefully going to be in a position to move forward.”

Tysall-Blay said time was always going to be tight for getting the money spent within the timescales set by NHS England and suppliers will be working “at pace” with trust to achieve them.

“Now that the news is out we all have to roll up our sleeves and get going,” he added.

Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust IT director Andy Thomas said Treasury approval for the fund is “absolutely fantastic news."

“We are all in the middle of capital planning and financial planning so the sooner we know the better. Hopefully we’ll get (the money) as soon as possible,” he added.

Paul Jackson, diagnostics and therapeutics IT manager at Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said it applied for funding in both this financial year and next, with bids for its EPR project and for e-prescribing.

“It’s great news. If our bids are successful, it’s good news for the trust and will allow us to move along with our projects a lot faster,” he explained.

“It will be tight, especially because the decision has been so delayed, but we will make sure it’s achievable.”

Director of Graphnet Markus Bolton said it will be exciting to see where this initiative takes NHS IT over the next 12 months.

“I reckon there will be enough great projects to make a huge difference in the NHS.”

He added that meeting the timescales set down will depend on the organisational abilities of the trusts involved.

InterSystems UK marketing manager Mike Fuller said he is “very enthusiastic” about the release of the funds. “IT will bring the productivity benefits that trusts so sorely need,” he said.

“However, I’m concerned that it fragments innovation and collaboration because the business cases that have been put forward are very specific and that can isolate them from the rest of the business of the trust and the trust from the rest of the NHS.”