NHS Connecting for Health, the flagship NHS IT programme, is to be evaluated by a national team of researchers led by the University of Edinburgh. The £1.5m study, which begins on 1st September 2008, will run until December 2010 and also involves researchers from the Universities of Nottingham, LSE, School of Pharmacy and the NHS. It will evaluate specifically the adoption of the NHS' Care Record Service which is being implemented in hospitals throughout England.
The NHS Connecting for Health programme, which is the most ambitious and over-arching IT-based transformation of healthcare in the world, aims to link more than 30,000 GPs to nearly 300 hospitals by 2014. The new systems include an online booking system, a centralised medical records system for 50m patients, e-prescriptions and fast computer network links between NHS organisations. The estimated total IT bill is set to be £12.4bn.
This national evaluation study - an independent enquiry commissioned by the NHS Connecting for Health Evaluation Programme - will analyse not only the technical elements of the new systems, but will also investigate patient and staff attitudes to the technology. Their findings will inform the roll-out of the programme to make it as successful and effective as possible.
Aziz Sheikh, Professor of Primary Care Research & Development at the University of Edinburgh, said, "We are delighted to be leading the evaluation of the implementation and adoption of NHS Connecting for Health's NHS Care Record Service in hospitals in England. The introduction of the electronic health record nationally in England is a unique experiment internationally that has the potential to transform both the structures and processes of delivery of care. This is however a very complex multi-faceted intervention and so the challenges of implementation must not be under-estimated."
For further information, please visit:
http://www.chs.med.ed.ac.uk/cphpcr/
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About the Centre for Public Health and Primary Care Research
The Centre for Public Health and Primary Care Research (CPHPCR) at the University of Edinburgh was launched in 2002, to bring together researchers active in public health and primary care research. Members of CPHPCR are drawn mainly from investigators in Community Health Sciences (CHS), a division of the School of Clinical Sciences and Community Health within the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. CHS comprises three sections, Public Health Sciences (PHS), General Practice (GP) and the Research Unit in Health, Behaviour and Change (RUHBC). For more information, please visit http://www.chs.med.ed.ac.uk/cphpcr/.
About NHS Connecting for Health
NHS Connecting for Health came into operation on 1 April 2005 and is an agency of the Department of Health. It supports the NHS to deliver better, safer care to patients, by bringing in new computer systems and services. For more information, please visit http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk.