IT system integration scheme for GP’s

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WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES BY DEPUTY R.G. LE HERISSIER OF ST. SAVIOUR

ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 4th JULY 2006

Question

Would the Minister inform members –

( a ) of the costs to date of the scheme intended to allow GPs to integrate with the relevant IT systems of the

Health and Social Services Department? and,

( b ) when this scheme will be completed and at what cost over and above those already incurred? Answer

1. A majorpivot of modernand effective health care is an integrated relationship between GPsandother community health professionals and their colleagues in the secondary care sector. For care to be effective information must follow the patient; aspatientspresentingeneral practice, then perhaps require an acute surgical ormedical intervention, and are then returned to general practice for ongoing care and treatment. The passage of information mustbeICTbased;andone patient record (transcending primary and secondary care interventions) mustexist (rather than having multifarious pieces ofpaper scattered over theorganisation which are then in dangerof being lost, orbeing forgotten, ornotbeing retrievable in time to be useful for clinical decision making). In Jersey, bothGPs and consultants have rightly demanded state of the art ICT systems  and, indeed,  have made it  clear  that  their ability  to  expand  the  health  system's capacity and capability to manage the Island's increasing morbidity isdependentuponsuchICT systems.

T h e Department of Health and Social Services has been working with representatives of GPs and consultants,

representatives of the Social Security Department, and other important stakeholders such as Family Nursing and  Home  Care  to  devise  an  all-embracing specification' of  service.  This  specification  describes  to prospective suppliers the nature of the ICT system which we are seeking to procure. This most certainly will include an ability to transfer timely information between GPs and health and social care practitioners of the Health and Social Services Department, (for the important service reasons detailed above), but it will also provide additional functionalities. These include record storage, the replacement of the Department's ageing and virtually redundant hardware, order comms and result reporting (the internal and external transmission of such matters as pathology and radiology results), and archiving, retrieval and storage facilities of such data as X-Ray, MRI and CT results.

T h e specification of service includes all of these important functionalities. In due course, this specification

will be submitted to prospective providers who, through a competitive process, will have to demonstrate how they would provide such a comprehensive range of services. This is the modern way of procuring ICT systems, relying upon the ability of the procurer to exploit the experience and track record of established suppliers in coming up with innovative and workable solutions. For this reason it is not possible to separate out the cost of integrating GP and HSSD ICT systems from the rest of the functionality. To labour the point, the functionality is an integrated single product.

I n this context, £85,000 has been spent in facilitating a number of workshops with the above mentioned

stakeholders,  researching  the  latest  generation  of  systems,  and  what  they  can  deliver,  and  writing  the specification of service.

2. As the abovemakes plain, the procurement of such a comprehensiveICT system is at an early stage. There is something of a  race against  time  underway. The  current  systems in  the  Health and Social Services Department, developed over the past 25years,areat risk because the current provider and servicing agent for this dilapidated equipmenthas been eased' out ofthe health ICT marketin the UK.Commitments have been

secured by which this current supplier will provide technical support until 2008, but it is impossible to secure any

further support commitment.

T h is state of affairs post 2008 is deemed to be high risk and the Council of Ministers has agreed that this is a

risk which cannot be afforded. Hence, capital funding has been received for this scheme of between £12.5 and £15 million; the eventual figure being determined through competition as referred to in (a) above. The full scheme will take some three years to introduce and officers and technicians are now working with doctors and other health care professionals to determine how best we can sequence the implementation in such a way that we can guard against the risk post 2008.