SOCITM (Society of Information Technology Management)
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Councils should lead on systems to support health and care resource allocation

In its consultation response to Liberating the NHS: An Information Revolution Socitm says that councils should be leading on systems to support health and care resource allocation.

The consultation is part of the Government's agenda to give people more information and control and greater choice about their health and social care. The intention is to transform the way information is accessed, collected, analysed and used, and to give patients in England more access to data and more control over their records, including allowing online access and sharing with others.

Socitm's message is that the top-down, large-scale, technology-led approaches that have characterised NHS IT provision in the past are not appropriate to future challenges. Instead, as GP commissioning is introduced, groups of local authorities should lead on provision of information systems to support outcome-focussed allocation of health and social care resources.

Alongside this, Socitm believes that information systems are needed to facilitate personalised choice of health and social care services by individuals and carers in collaboration with GP and local authority services. The market has already started to deliver such systems for social care and this should be encouraged in the health sector.

Such approaches will help achieve the aspirations expressed in the consultation document, which is strong on service user engagement and empowerment and on proposals for standards within health, but weaker on joining-up health and social care information for service users and professionals at point of decision and delivery.

Learning should also be adopted from adult social care where personalisation and citizen control is further advanced

You can read Socitm's response to Liberating the NHS: An Information Revolution - Making it happen on this website.

 

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