level. Performance management, management information systems and the
Balanced Scorecard approach were applied several years ago. Children's
social care is significantly ahead of the NHS is this area.
I'll keep this brief and make a lengthy response to the consultation
when I get round to it. I'm afraid I've only had time to skim the
executive summary.
How are patients going to be confident their data is safe and can't be
changed? Disperse data systems are more vulnerable to hackers than
centralised ones with expert IT security.. My personal experience of
attempting to get my records from the NHS fell far outside the legal
time scales. My experience in social care is when there's a problem
staff change the records. Patients with mental illness may not want
their data shared because there's a high stigma amongst medical
professionals. How will the proposals ensure the patient data is safe
from these factors?
I'd also like to mention the Balanced Scorecard approach. This was used
at Harrow Council. National measures were combined with local measures
to provide rhe senior management team with the ability to act and react
to problems as well as holding their decisions accountable. I haven't
read the full document so this may have been mentioned. In practice it
required a change in culture at all levels.
Another lesson from children's services. Social workers like front line
NHS staff don't want any more paperwork or bureaucracy. They want to
focus on helping people. At Harrow and across a number of social care
departments software was brought in to make things easier for people but
it was software designed by people who knew what it's like to be a
social worker rather than a management consultant or an IT expert. It
tried to reduce their workload rather than increase. It was also
designed to be intuitive. The systems connected well with the informaton
required for the national performance management framework, a framework
that had a set of measures introduced after the Victoria Climbe
disaster. National measures are there to prevent this sort of thing
happening and they're also there to ensure the NHS postcode inequality
of service doesn't get worse.
Back then many people didn't have smartphones or PDAs. My private
psychiatrist did and he typed his notes straight into his PDA. If I
wanted a copy of my records I could have them emailed as quick as he
could press a few buttons.
A friend of mine is working on an exciting project that's coming out of
MIT. It's relevant just to know what exciting developments are happening
outside the UK. This is a medical software for poor nations however the
technology could be applied here to make for better quality and more
consistent mental and physical healthcare.
http://www.sanamobile.org/tech.html
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