"National" NHS elearning system

The British Journal of Healthcare Computing and Information Management is currently carrying a news story "NHS to deploy national system for elearning" about the provision of a National Learning Management System (NLMS) as part of the NHS Electronic Staff Record (ESR).

This will provide both individual employees and their managers access to each persons record of learning. The new system is supposed to be piloted from June 2008 and is expected to be made available nationally by September 2008.

It will be interesting to see if this "national" system for England will be able to exchange data and resources with the system currently being purchased for NHS Scotland, and whether any testing has been done to see whether the system can exchange records with the systems used in universities and other educational organisations which deliver much of the learning (and elearning) for NHS staff.

Health Informatics Community to restrict access

The latest bulletin from the Health Informatics Community says that:
"we plan to review our policy on access to the HIC and you will only be automatically granted access to the closed areas of the site if you have a nhs.net, nhs.uk or .gov.uk domain name."

I am worried that this will limited the opportunities provided by this site for the exchange of news, views and ideas, and will mean that those from academia and others with a legitimate interest in the development of health informatics in the UK, including members of the Faculty of Health Informatics will be excluded from discussions.

I have sent an email requesting further explanation or discussion of this decision but not, as yet, received any reply.

Dr Foster & the Information Centre

Following the report in February from the National Audit Office about the deal between the NHS Information Centre and Dr Foster the public accounts committee of MPs has now weighed in with further criticism of the way the deal was done and the valuation placed upon it which put lots of money (£7.6 million) into the pockets of the shareholders of Dr Foster.

The EHI report DH blasted for 'back room deal' with Dr Foster carries further comment and criticism.

NHS CfH Southern Cluster ETD day

Today I attended a study day organised by NHS Connecting for Health Southern Cluster Education, Training and Development (ETD) at Taunton Racecourse.

The day was chaired by Nick Jupp (ETD Lead, NHS Somerset Health Informatics)

The first speaker was different to the usual NHS "Men in Suits" when - Andrew Raynes (ETD Programme Manager, NHS CFH, Southern Cluster) appeared in his schoolboy outfit and used a high tech drum kit to illustrate points he wanted to make about working together, under the title of "NPfIT Skool of Rock". He achieved audience participation with the use of maracas and tambourines.
(I have video available for blackmail purposes)

The next (rather dry) presentation was on the Role and Benefits of Change Management within NPfIT by Steve Swift (Business Change Manager , Fujitsu NHS Services)

After coffee and some useful networking with colleagues from the NHS, Cerner and Fujitsu alliance, Phil Bolton (E-learning Development Manager, Royal United Hospital, Bath) gave a presentation about the issues they have experienced in training for their implementation of Cerner Millenium Release 0 which has been delayed for 14 months (so far) and demonstrated an elearning application they have developed rather than use the training domain provided by Fujitsu.

The final presentation of the morning was by Dr Roger Tackley (Chairman Southern Cluster Terminology Group SCCAG) who talked about the SNOMED CT terminology system as a concept. This seemed unfamilar to many of the trainers present and he emphasised the importance of this for clinical use of the Cerner Millenium system.

After a good lunch there were four parallel sessions:
• Table top challenge –Maria Scott (Clinical Benefits Advisors, NHS CFH)
• Professional Support and Development workshop - Di Wilson (ETD Networks Development Manager, NHS CFH) / Jackie Smith (Informatics Specialists Development Managers, NHS CFH)
• CIS Accredited Learning – Kamru Mohammed (ETD Systems & Platform Lead, NHS CFH)
• Implementing Training standards (What do you want out of the standards – A Case Study approach) – Jonathan Coe (ETD Standards Delivery Manager)

I attended the session on Professional Support and Development which involved teams using a variety of children's toys, sellotape, and modeling clay to represent what health informatics is and the knowledge and skills required - and the role of NPfIT (during which I got to do a bit of juggling!)

The day closed with a panel session answering (or trying to) some of the questions which had been put onto post it notes during the day by delegates.

An undercurrent to the day was provided by a report on the Radio 4 news this am which was carried by the Times as £6.2bn IT scheme for NHS ‘is not working and is not going to work’ with the comment that "A lack of vision and poor understanding of the sheer size of the task meant that the IT overhaul “isn’t working and isn’t going to work”, by Andrew Rollerson, an executive with Fujitsu. As I was sitting at a table with some of the staff from Fujitsu this caused some discussion!

Generally it was quite an interesting day - although obviously aimed at NHS ETD staff rather than me - and I did make some useful contacts and learn some bits I wasn't aware of.

I am assured that the power point presentations will be made available on the NHS Connecting for Health Southern Cluster Education, Training and Development (ETD) web site.

Technorati Tags: NHS, NPfI, CfH, ETD

NHSu report & Information Tribunal

Following the decision notice issued by the Information Commissioner in November about my request for the report by Sir William Wells into the NHS University, I have now received copies of the appeal by the Department of Health and the response to the appeal by the Information Commissioner.

The Department have argued that the Information Commissioner was wrong in his application of sections 33, 35(1)(a), 40(2) and 41 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The appeal hearing is to be scheduled between 8th and 22nd March and the Information Tribunal and is aiming for a final determination by 22nd June 2007.

I am currently deciding whether I want to be "joined to the appeal" & will post further news wen I know the date of he appeal.

Technorati Tags: NHS, NHSU, FOI

NHSu report - DoH has appealed

Happy New year.

As regular readers of this blog will know I have been trying, for over 2 years, to get the Department of Health to disclose the report by Sir William Wells into the NHS University.

At the end of November I thought this had suceeded when the Information Commisioner issued his decision notice agreeing with me that it was in the public interest for the report to be published and ordering the department of health to disclose it within 35 days.

I have been watching for this over Christmas and New year and the 35 days expired a few days ago & I hadn't seen it.

I have found out today that the Department of Health appealed, on 21st December, to the Information Tribunal. Although I have not seen a copy of the appeal I understand it argues that the Information Commissioner was wrong in his application of sections 33, 35(1)(a), 40(2) and 41 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The appeal has been sent to the information commissioner and then the chair of the information tribunal will rule on what is to be done next. I do not know how long this will take but will post it here when I find out anything further.


Technorati Tags: NHS, NHSU, Freedom of Information, FOI, Wells report

NHSu - IC Decision Notice Now available

The Information Commissioners web site now has the Decision notice relating to the Wells report into the NHSuniversity see http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/decisionnotices/2006/fs_50070878.pdf

You can search for Case ref number: FS50070878 or use the "Authority" drop down list to look at the Department of Health.

Now I'm just waiting for a sight of the actual report which I'm hoping will be posted on the Department of Health's New Publications page

Technorati Tags: NHS, NHSU, Freedom of Information, FOI, Wells report

Wells report on NHSU - IC Decision

The Information Commissioner has just released a "Decision notice" (Ref: FS50070878) relating to my request to the Department of Health to disclose the report by Sir William Wells into the NHS university (NHSU) which will appear on the Decision Notices section of their web site soon.

The creation of the NHSu was a 2001 Labour Manifesto commitment.

The Commissioner has ruled that under section 1(1) and 10 of the Freedom of Information Act:

1. The Department has not complied with its' obligations under section 1(1) of the Act in that it failed to communicate to the complainant information to which he was entitled on the basis that it is exempt from disclosure under sections 33, 35(1)(a), 40(2) and 41 of the Act.

In view of this he requires that:

The Department shall, within 35 calender days from the date of the notice (27th Nov 2006) disclose the information requested in accordance with its duty under section 1(1) of the Act.

I will not reproduce the full decision notice here - it runs to 15 pages of legal jargon and will appear on their web site soon, but I do want to give a few significant highlights.

I believe this is currently the longest running complaint.
I originally contacted my MP in Oct 2004
I sent my initial letter to the DoH on 1st Jan 2005 & they rejected my request
I appealed and they again refused (27th April 2005)

I first wrote to the Information Commissioner on 8th April 2005 and there have been various communications since.

I believe this is the first test of section 33(1) of the act which relates to audit functions of statutory bodies, and the commissioner has agreed with me that this should be disclosed to the public. It is not yet clear how much the NHSU cost but estimates of £50-£60 million pounds of taxpayers money do not seem fanciful. Maybe when we see the full report this will become clear.

During the course of the commissioners investigations the department claimed that in addition to section 33 of the act other sections applied eg 35(1) (formulation of government policy) for the entire report and sections 40(2) (personal information) and 41 (information provided in confidence) for parts of the report.

Although the commissioner accepted that some of the sections were relevant to the report in all cases he said that the public interest in disclosure was greater than the public interest in maintaining the exemption.

If the department disagrees with the Information Commissioners report they have 28 days to appeal - I hope they do not choose to exercise this right, as this has gone on long enough - however I am worried that some government lawyers will see this ruling as setting precedents which may be applied to other government departments and processes and will not be as open as I would like them to be.

I look forward to seeing the Wells report on the Department of Health Web Site as I hope there are many lessons we can learn for the future.

I still support the NHS and many of the declared aims of the NHSu although I have some doubts about the way in which it was implemented.

I will comment again here when I finally see details of the report.

I would like to say that although it has been a long wait I recognise that the Information Commissioner has received a massive number of complaints and I would like to compliment and thank the particular "Complaints Team Leader - Central Government" who has dealt with this complaint throughout in a professional and courteous way.

Technorati Tags: NHS, NHSU, Freedom of Information, FOI, Wells report