IT

The IT Programme is geared towards assisting each of Our Programmes with their IT needs. Programmes with a significant IT component at present include Cancer, Child Health, and Women’s Health.

Across all programmes there are a number of common themes requiring improvements in data sharing and transfer, which guides the central IT vision of an interconnected patient record, with the patient’s data being available wherever it is needed, to patients and to clinicians.

The data sharing requirements can be viewed along two dimensions:

• Vertical: the flow of data between different organisations along the patient pathway, from primary care to hospital based care. The additional goal, of patient access to their own record, would appear at the upper end of this axis.
• Horizontal: the flow of data to equivalent organisations in different geographical locations. This can be applied to any setting of care, but is most relevant to hospital care where patients are transferred in and out of tertiary and secondary services, and need the information to go with them.

In addition to what and how data is shared, there are multiple reasons for sharing data, which include direct clinical care delivery (e.g. access to patient test results from another hospital, or knowledge of current medications), targeting organisation or system interventions (e.g. for patients with long term conditions to support proactive management of their care), surveillance and performance management (regular reviews of metrics to understand compliance with performance standards) and for research (to understand the population, target research activity and increase trial participation).

For more information, please contact Tony Lezard, Director of IT at UCLPartners.