Other Documents
From Nhs It Info
Implementing Information for Health: Even More Challenging Than Expected (10 Jun 2002)
School of Health Information scince, University of Victoria
http://hinf.uvic.ca/archives/Protti.pdf
By Prof. Dennis Protti - "Over the period 6th August to 19th October 2001, and at the invitation of the heads of the Information Policy Unit (IPU) of the Department of Health and the NHS Information Authority, I once again visited England to review the state of progress of Information for Health, taking account of the implications of the emerging changes within the UK health care system. Returning to the UK, it did not take me long to realise that the NHS was once again in the midst of a significant period of transition. It was evident, even to an outsider, that the United Kingdom has a Government which believes that the NHS has to be re-organised and made to be more equitable, accountable, and customer-focused. I sensed that it is a Government that is looking for obvious progress in reforming the public sector - spurred on in particular by negative media coverage about the NHS. In its recent policy document, Shifting the Balance of Power in the NHS (StBOP), the Government expresses its desire to devolve power and decision-making down to the frontline, to decentralise, to provide patients with choice, to give local staff the resources and the freedoms to innovate, develop and improve local services. This desire pervades the changes I observed and sets the tone for my report – these are fascinating, if somewhat daunting, times for the NHS. . ."
Green Book, Appraisal and evaluation in central government (16 Jan 2003)
HM Treasury
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/economic_data_and_tools/greenbook/data_greenbook_index.cfm
"Information is needed for a market to operate efficiently. Buyers need to know the quality of the good or service to judge the value of the benefit it can provide. Sellers, lenders and investors need to know the reliability of a buyer, borrower or entrepreneur. This information must be available fully to both sides of the market, and where it is not, market failure may result. This is known as 'asymmetry of information' and can arise in situations where, for example, sellers have information that buyers don't (or vice versa) about some aspect of product or service quality. Information asymmetry can restrict the quality of the good traded, resulting in 'adverse selection'. Another possible situation is where a contract or relationship places incentives upon one party to take (or not take) unobservable steps that are prejudicial to another party. This is known as 'moral hazard', an example of which is the tendency of people with insurance to reduce the care they take to avoid or reduce insured losses." [The CfH team admitted at our meeting in April that there was a considerable amount that they did not know about the technical details of the systems they were buying. Indeed, the whole nature of output-based specification (OBS) seems to ensure information asymmetry and moral hazard as defined below.]
New NHS IT (Feb 2004)
Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/POSTpn214.pdf
An an accurate, brief and clear summary of the situation at the time of writing.
The Spine, an English national programme (25 Mar 2005)
Ringholm White Paper
http://www.ringholm.de/docs/00970_en.htm
A clear description of the Spine
Transformational Government: Enabled by Technology (Nov 2005)
Cabinet Office Report
http://www.cio.gov.uk/documents/pdf/transgov/transgov-strategy.pdf
System Design Or Social Change (6 Apr 2006)
Parliamentary IT Committee (PITCOM) on the subject of Public Sector 'IT' procurement
http://www.pitcom.org.uk/reports/Malcolm-Mills-talk.doc
Submission by Malcolm Mills: ". . . I suggest three things. Immediately, to increase the success rate and restore confidence, I would simplify, de-risk and specify a more evolutionary set of requirements for endeavours of this kind. I would then increase their delivery time-scales to be more in keeping with the much longer timeframes we know from experience are associated with achieving successful social change. In the medium term, I would do two things: Recognising that the major risks, and by far the greater costs, lie with the addressing people issues, and not technology ones, HM Treasury should commission new ‘Green Book’ appraisal guidelines for scrutinising the budgeting and planning of socio-technical endeavours during the Gateway decision-making process. And finally, faced with clear evidence of an acute shortage of interdisciplinary skills and competences in Government and Industry to design and manage the range of socio-technical systems in the public programme, a task force should be established to examine how the Nation might produce a sufficient number of competent and skilled people able to lead, develop, and then support, such critical endeavours. . ."
Guidance for NHS Foundation Trusts on Co-operating with the National Programme for Information Technology (12 April 2006)
Monitor, Independent Regulator of NHS Trusts
http://www.e-health-insider.com/tc_domainsBin/Document_Library0282/NPfIT_guidance_Final_120406.pdf?
NHS IT chief meets criticism head-on (25 May 2006)
Computing
http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2156832/nhs-chief-meets-criticism-head
Interview with Richard Granger.
'Computer says no' to Mr Blair's botched £20bn NHS upgrade (4 Jun 2006)
Sunday Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/04/nhs04.xml
Granger: bricks of the digital NHS coming together (16 Jun 2006)
e-Health Insider
http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/item.cfm?ID=1949
Richard Granger interview.
Information Governance in NHS's NPfIT: A case for Policy Specification (2006)
Moritz Y. Becker, Microsoft Research (To appear in International Journal of Medical Informatics, 2006.)
http://www2.cantabgold.net/users/m.y.becker.98/publications/becker06ijmi.pdf
Plundering_The_Public_Sector
Extracts from the book by David Craig, provided here with the author's and publisher's permission.
NHS IT systems crisis: the story so far (30 Aug 2006)
Computer Business Review
http://www.cbronline.com/article_cbr.asp?guid=35AC0F09-6C33-4D0E-AC2C-D912E2AA6042
"The NHS's Connecting for Health plan to update and link up health service systems have hit the headlines in recent weeks thanks to reported problems with key software supplier iSoft, and criticisms of the project's management and cost. CBR has been tracking the project since its creation, and in this article has brought together the story so far, beginning with the handing out of contracts in late 2003. . ."
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/health/docs/publications/ehealthimpactsept2006.pdf eHealth is Worth it
An assessment of "The economic benefits of implemented eHealth solutions at ten European sites (Sep 2006)
European Commission, Directorate General Information Society and Media, ICT for Health Unit
Dying for Data (Oct 2006)
IEEE Spectrum
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/oct06/4589
"A comprehensive system of electronic medical records promises to save lives and cut health care costs—but how do you build one?" (Robert N. Charette)
‘Gung-ho' attitude scuppers public-sector IT projects (2 Oct 2006)
Computer Weekly
"Government IT heads’ ‘gung-ho’ and reckless attitudes to risk is wasting millions of taxpayer money on over-complex, poorly tested systems, according to a think-tank study. Contrary to the stereotype, many public-sector managers have a ‘reckless streak’ and are dazzled by the potential of the technology, according to the Where next for transformational government? report by The Work Foundation, (September 2006)"
What CfH Could and Should Learn from Defence Procurement (Oct 2006)
Malcolm Mills
IT and Modernisation (9 Oct 2006)
http://www.newstatesman.com/pdf/itmodernisation2006.pdf
New Statesman
New Statesman Round Table Discussion
