Posts by Ewan

Let’s do it like the Internet

There is much talk about “Standards” following the publication of the NIB Framework “Personalised health and care 2020: a framework for action”. Standards are of course a self-evidently good thing, but only if you do them right which is far from the way the NHS has traditionally done them or looks like doing them in the future.…

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Farewell to Ruthless Standardisation

“Ruthless Standardisation” was the failed mantra of the NHS National Programme for IT. The Programme is dead, but in some places this view still persist but it is time to consign it to history as something else that “seemed a good idea at the time” In a previous blog I said “Standards are a Barrier to…

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NHS VistA – An Update

[Update with additional Links ahead of NHS England/Intellect workshop on 8 July] There is growing support for the production of a NHS version of the VistA the US open source EPR used by the US Veterans Administration and more recently by a number of health systems outside of the US. I’m a tremendous fan of…

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Digital Healthcare – Making the most of NHS IPR

I’ve got what I think is an important question for NHS England. How do we get the best value out of the IPR (intellectual property rights) created by NHS organisations developing digital tools – Is it by freely sharing this IPR or by seeking to exploit it commercially? Encouraging innovation, and more importantly getting it…

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Electronic Health Records

This blog is the first of a series of extracts from a long paper on Electronic Health Records that I have been maintaining and revising since 2008. It’s been shared on a limited basis and has benefit from review and input by a number of individuals,  particularly fellow members of the BCS Primary Health Care Specailists Group…

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Time for Zero-Tolerance

I heard the blindingly obvious statement at the recent Intellect stream of BCS HC2013 Conference in Birmingham that “If you give people software that makes their life easier then adoption is not a problem” Given the clear truth of this statement, I wonder why so many “designing” and procuring NHS IT Systems manage to deliver…

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Healthcare and Banking

NHS leaders often make comparisons between the use of IT and digital service in banking and health. While we have much to learn from other sectors I feel this comparison means that those who make it don’t fully understand the challenge. What banking systems do is fundamentally very simple – They move money (unambiguously and simply represented by a…

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Preserving Trust in the Digital Age

Trust lies at the heart of the relationship between patients and those that care for them. Meeting the challenges faced by the health care system requires that we make much greater use of digital technology and increasing sophisticated use of information, but in doing so we need to ensure we preserve trust. Healthcare professionals have…

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The power of information and digital technology to transform the NHS

I believe passionately in the power of information and digital technology to transform the way we deliver health and care, indeed I consider it essential if we are the meet the growing demands the health and care system faces within the resources likely to be available. We need to mobilise information to help us redesign…

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