Government & Policy

Initiative will bring together venture capitalists, startups and government officials, Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan said.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad also said in a recent HIMSS TV interview that even if an organisation has a good programme and system in place, digitising healthcare will not succeed if there is no clinical buy-in underpinned by training.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will kick off 2019 looking to reward new ways artificial intelligence can be safely leveraged to for improved quality of care.

The UK’s HealthTech Advisory Board, created to help guide the government and look at transforming the use of technology across the NHS, will meet for the first time today, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has said. Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock vowed to "sort out" the IT infrastructure of the NHS earlier this year, calling it “the world’s most frustrating place to work for its IT”, with “only 10 per cent of the challenge" being the technology.  “Ninety per cent of the challenge is the culture,” he said. The new initiative will bring together clinicians, academics and tech experts to explore and support efforts to harness innovation and reduce pressures on the system. “It will highlight where change needs to happen, where best practice isn’t being followed, and be an ideas hub for how we transform the NHS to improve patient outcomes, patient experience, and to make the lives of NHS staff easier," Hancock added. The board will be chaired by Dr Ben Goldacre, Evidence-Based Medicine DataLab Director at the University of Oxford, and members include NHS Digital Academy CEO and Director of Digital at the Salford Royal Group Rachel Dunscombe and Nicola Blackwood, Chair of the Human Tissue Authority and former Health Minister. Roger Taylor, who was appointed as Chair of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation back in June, will also be joining them, along with: Nicole Junkermann, NJF Holdings Founder Manoj Badale, Blenheim Chalcot Co-Founder David Gann, Imperial College London Professor of Innovation and Technology Management Sir Mark Walport, UK Research and Innovation Chief Executive Daniel Korski, PUBLIC CEO and Co-Founder Michelle Brennan, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies Group Chair Dan Sheldon, Well Pharmacy Head of Digital Jeni Tennison, Open Data Institute CEO Parker Moss, F-Prime and Eight Roads Entrepreneur in Residence. “To make the changes that are needed we must work together and have a common vision. We need to couple this with an agile culture where we constantly improve systems and champion the innovators," Hancock said at the Health and Care Innovation Expo in Manchester in September. “The culture change we need to see requires strong management and leadership. I’m determined to grow stronger leadership across the NHS. We should train more of our own, yes, and bring in more talent from the outside too who know how to inspire change.” In October, an initial digital, data and technology strategy was published by the DHSC, outlining plans to modernise the NHS IT infrastructure and introduce a clear set of open standards that all digital services and IT systems in the NHS would have to meet.  Asked how he would measure the success of innovation being embedded into the NHS at the GovTech summit in Paris last week, Hancock said: "When I'm no longer the world's largest owner of fax machines." Freedom of Information requests submitted by the UK's Royal College of Surgeons earlier this year indicated that NHS hospitals trusts in England owned more than 8,000 fax machines, and a report from DeepMind Health's independent reviewers panel from 2017 said the health service retained "the dubious title of being the world’s largest purchaser of fax machines". At the GovTech summit, Hancock added: "I want to see an improvement in the outcomes of government services and, so, I try to resist what is a pressure that all politicians come under, which is to give very fixed and specific targets, because (...) there may be even better technology that comes along that I might discover at this conference that we've never heard of before." Twitter: @1Leontina Contact the author: lpostelnicu@himss.org

Dunedin, the second largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the principal city of the Otago region, is currently making plans for a new digital hospital. The Southern District Health Board’s (DHB) Executive Director People, Culture & Technology, Mike Collins said that the new hospital will be largely paperless and will leverage technology to save time for both staff and patients. Collins is responsible for the technology infrastructure for the new hospital, which will be built on the former Cadbury factory site, and says the focus is currently on the ambulatory care block. “We are trying to implement new technologies and solutions well before the hospital opens. From a change management perspective, I want staff to be comfortable working in that digital environment before the doors open,” he added. His team is running workshops with clinicians and the community and taking a persona-based approach to designing the technology needed to enable better experiences for patients and staff. A key question asked when looking at patient journeys is whether the person really needs to go to hospital or whether they can be cared for closer to home. Webinar: How Chief Digital Officers Can Boost Digital Transformation This planning is not based solely around the DHB, but around the southern health system as a whole, and incorporates the region’s new Primary and Community Care Strategy. Dr John Adams, the new Chair of the Clinical Leadership Group – the senior clinical staff guiding the clinical direction of the New Dunedin Hospital, also emphasised the importance of an integrated approach to healthcare in the Southern region in an interview: “It’s certainly clear to me that this is not just about building a physical hospital. It’s about building on the moves that have already been made around how the hospital works, and how it relates with primary care and the whole plan of health services in the region and the South Island. The New Dunedin Hospital is going to be a really important cog in the whole of the health services in the South Island. Part of the planning will be about how the clinicians continue to develop those exciting new ways of collaborative functioning, both internally and externally.” The region has developed a digital strategy and is working with the Ministry of Health to identify key strategic goals, such as the implementation of interoperability standards. The strategy plans for the next five to six years and is in line with the South Island Alliance’s regional strategy and the Ministry’s Digital Health Strategy, which is still in draft form. A version of this article first appeared on eHealthNews.nz.

At a two-day event to learn about the ethics and consumer implications of artificial intelligence, an ONC official and tech developer offered the healthcare perspective.

The Welsh Assembly Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has questioned the “competence, capability and capacity" across the system to digitise healthcare services in Wales after an inquiry uncovered a “raft of problems”, from delays in the delivery of digital projects to “unclear” lines of accountability. The committee found that there had been 21 outages of national systems from January to July this year. A letter from the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board indicated that a national data centre failure that occurred between 3 to 5 August affected “all of Wales”. The PAC said it was “deeply concerned about the slow pace of delivery of modern informatics systems”, asking the Welsh Government to set out a “clear timetable” to put the infrastructure on a “stable footing”. Webinar: The INFRAM: Your Pathway to Healthcare Infrastructure Development “We trust our inquiry and this report will be a wake-up call to all those involved in harnessing the power of digital innovation to improve healthcare in Wales. We believe it’s time for a reboot," said Nick Ramsay, PAC chairman. Dr Peter Saul, Royal College of GPs Wales Joint Chair, said the report, released today, raised "alarming findings about the weaknesses of IT in the Welsh NHS". "Data outages can be extraordinarily disruptive for practices and for patients. They affect appointments, prescriptions and the nuts and bolts of a functioning practice and can take hours to recover from. Unfortunately these data outages are becoming all too common, leaving GPs scrambling to find solutions or workarounds while waiting rooms fill up. "Embracing safe, reliable and innovative technology will be vital for the future of healthcare, but that will be undermined if the Welsh NHS cannot get its IT right. Whether it's the basics like appointment booking, or larger projects such as electronic prescribing or electronic patient records, we need IT that works," Dr Saul added. Government to review committee's findings The inquiry follows a report from the Wales Audit Office, published at the beginning of the year, which indicated that the NHS as a whole spends less than two per cent of its budget on ICT. It estimated that around £484m would be needed, on top of existing budgets, to digitise services. “There is a need for clarity from Welsh Government as to whether the tentative estimate is in the right ballpark, and the witnesses we asked thought it was, and whether significant resources will be set aside and over what time frame,” the committee said.  Their findings also indicated that the NHS Wales Informatics Service (NWIS), the organisation responsible for IT, was “being asked to do too much within its current resources and needed clearer priorities”, and concerns were raised about the cybersecurity risk posed by the CaNISC cancer IT system, which has not been supported by Microsoft since 2014.  "The Committee would like to see CANISC replaced urgently and as soon as is practicably possible," PAC members wrote in the report. "Given the red risk rating and the cybersecurity issues, there is a compelling argument for accelerating the work if possible. However, the Committee recognises that this would require careful consideration of the knock-on consequences." The Welsh Government and the NWIS said they would review the committee's findings in detail. “We welcome the report published today by the Public Accounts Committee into the use of information technology and the vital role it plays in our Welsh health and care system," said a spokesperson for NWIS. “We participated in the Public Accounts Committee review in April and July this year and were pleased to share insight into the specification, planning, delivery and management of national digital health and care services for Wales. “As an NHS organisation we are working with our partners across the health and care system to make the most of the benefits that digital services can offer to health and care professionals, patients and citizens." Twitter: @1Leontina Contact the author: lpostelnicu@himss.org

What the 116th Congress might mean for the fate of the ACA and healthcare technology.

NHS Scotland has signed a new agreement with Microsoft to deploy Office 365 and migrate all systems to Windows 10 E5 during the next three years in an effort to boost cyber resilience and mitigate any potential threats. "We're creating the environment and the tools to allow staff and services to flourish. At the moment they are too often hampered by systems that don't join up or make collaboration easy,” said Jeane Freeman, who was appointed as Scotland’s Health Secretary in June this year. Freeman explained this included the development of a new national digital platform and setting out “common standards and approaches for healthcare systems”. HITN sister publication MobiHealthNews reported in August that Dr Alistair Hann, former Skyscanner Chief Technology Officer, had joined the NHS Digital Service, based within the national health board NHS Education for Scotland, to help build the new platform, working with Geoff Huggins, Director of the NES Digital Service, and Liz Elliot, former Chief Operating Officer at the Health Data Research UK institute. Webinar: How Cybersecurity Leaders Avoid Data Breaches in Healthcare Commenting on today’s announcement, Huggins told HITN: "We're building a joined-up health and social care system, based on a National Digital Platform, so that people can get the best care, regardless of where they are. Moving to 365 is a fundamental building-block in that process." Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Social Care agreed a centralised deal with Microsoft, enabling all NHS organisations to use Windows 10 and strengthen their cyber defence capabilities, nearly a year after the WannaCry attack disrupted operations at around one-third of NHS hospital trusts in England and 603 primary care and other NHS organisations. NHS Scotland has the option to extend its three-year agreement with Microsoft for a further 24 months under similar terms. Twitter: @1Leontina Contact the author: lpostelnicu@himss.org

NHS Digital will cut around 500 jobs in a major restructure expected to "change the skills and capability of its workforce", Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock has said. Hancock confirmed earlier reports that the reconfiguration of NHS Digital would be delivered in a “series of waves”, set to be completed by 2020/21. “At this stage, NHS Digital estimates that a net overall reduction in headcount of circa 500 full time equivalents is expected. A programme of staff engagement and discussions with staff representatives is in place. All staff will be affected by the restructuring and will be required to apply for posts in the new organisation structure,” the secretary told Parliament this week. NHS Digital employs more than 2,500 staff around the country, including in London, Southport, and Southampton, while its head office is based in Leeds. Computer Weekly reported earlier this year that NHS Digital organised several meetings with its staff to inform them of the restructure, with documents sent to employees indicating that those not be appointed by December this year would be offered the option to consider voluntary redundancy, according to an email seen by the publication. Hancock said the agency would “provide every facility to help staff secure suitable alternate employment”. “A professional outplacement service has been secured to work with displaced staff and NHS Digital is seeking opportunities with other public and private sector employers in the areas affected,” he explained. Sean Walsh, NHS Digital Director of Regions and Professions, said: “This restructure is about skilling up our workforce and rethinking our structure. This will ensure that we have the deep skills and technical expertise to deliver the best service for both patients and customers, and that our structure allows us to flex according to the needs of the health and care sector. “We estimate that the restructure will lead to a net reduction of around 500 full time equivalent roles across the organisation. Where possible, this will be through a combination of redeployment, natural turnover and suitable alternative employment. “It is important to note that we cannot be precise about the exact numbers at this stage because they may change to reflect the outcomes of the proposals for change, as well as external influences which may affect us. “This is understandably a difficult and challenging time for our hardworking employees and we are taking every possible step to provide them with all the help and support they need.” Twitter: @1Leontina Contact the author: lpostelnicu@himss.org