NHS England (NHSE) has published a guide for integrated care systems (ICSs) in making their digital and technology choices.
Titled Who Does What? it sets out a principle that the organisation will only provide services and products where a quartet of aims are fulfilled, covering better health and care outcomes, better patient and clinical experience, improved population health and value for money and reduction in costs per capita.
The document sets out a number of core enablers for ICSs, including the universal use of electronic patient records with a simplified source system, the NHS App, federated data hubs, secure APIs or record location, and secure data environments with access for authenticated users.
All this is supported by a National Service Catalogue of technology resources for ICSs with six categories: direct care; population health and proactive care; research and innovation, planning, oversight and service improvement; data analytics and platforms; and core infrastructure and productivity tools.
NHSE will act as a single central service provider where there is a critical need for scale and visibility at a national level, and where national standardisation is critical for patient care and cost optimsiaton.
Alternatively, it will provide support when it is not the single central service provider, through market management, national standards and delivery support with regional and local coordination.
Ongoing work
NHSE says it will continue to work on the catalogue and a target state architecture, and plans to update the information in the framework on a regular basis.
“It is not an end state, but a framework that we will build on to enable the system,” it says.
