NHS Connecting for Health's NHS Care Record Service Evaluation Begins

University of EdinburghNHS 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/

Related news articles:

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.

Most Popular Now

AI-Powered CRISPR could Lead to Faster G…

Stanford Medicine researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to help scientists better plan gene-editing experiments. The technology, CRISPR-GPT, acts as a gene-editing “copilot” supported by AI to help...

Groundbreaking AI Aims to Speed Lifesavi…

To solve a problem, we have to see it clearly. Whether it’s an infection by a novel virus or memory-stealing plaques forming in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, visualizing disease processes...

ChatGPT 4o Therapeutic Chatbot 'Ama…

One of the first randomized controlled trials assessing the effectiveness of a large language model (LLM) chatbot 'Amanda' for relationship support shows that a single session of chatbot therapy...

AI Tools Help Predict Severe Asthma Risk…

Mayo Clinic researchers have developed artificial intelligence (AI) tools that help identify which children with asthma face the highest risk of serious asthma exacerbation and acute respiratory infections. The study...

AI Model Forecasts Disease Risk Decades …

Imagine a future where your medical history could help predict what health conditions you might face in the next two decades. Researchers have developed a generative AI model that uses...

AI Distinguishes Glioblastoma from Look-…

A Harvard Medical School–led research team has developed an AI tool that can reliably tell apart two look-alike cancers found in the brain but with different origins, behaviors, and treatments. The...

Smart Device Uses AI and Bioelectronics …

As a wound heals, it goes through several stages: clotting to stop bleeding, immune system response, scabbing, and scarring. A wearable device called "a-Heal," designed by engineers at the University...

AI Model Indicates Four out of Ten Breas…

A project at Lund University in Sweden has trained an AI model to identify breast cancer patients who could be spared from axillary surgery. The model analyses previously unutilised information...

Overcoming the AI Applicability Crisis a…

Opinion Article by Harry Lykostratis, Chief Executive, Open Medical. The government’s 10 Year Health Plan makes a lot of the potential of AI-software to support clinical decision making, improve productivity, and...

Dartford and Gravesham Implements Clinis…

Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust has taken a significant step towards a more digital future by rolling out electronic test ordering using Clinisys ICE. The trust deployed the order communications...