Dr John Powell, Chairman of the Health Information Management Committee
Speech to ARM 2005
29 June 2005
In the last session we changed our name from Information Technology to Health Information Management Committee to reflect the fact that as the representative body of doctors the BMA should not be concerned with the technical details of computers, but with how information should best be managed in the health service to support patient care and medical working practices. This may or may not require electronic systems. There are two major areas of committee work which I would like to draw attention to in my report to you this year.
Firstly, our agenda in the last session has inevitably been dominated by the National Programme for IT in England, and the similar initiatives underway in the other countries of the UK. This is a massive programme. At least 6 billion pounds of public money committed so far with billions more to follow. This is the largest civilian IT project in the world.
The BMA is supportive of the aims of this programme – the NHS has suffered years of underinvestment in IT systems, and a national programme has the potential to revolutionize patient care in this country, bringing fundamental changes to the way health professionals work. But as you know we have been critical of certain aspects. In particular we have criticised the poor level of clinical engagement between the programme and the health professionals who will have to use the new systems. We have also been critical along with our colleagues on the joint GP IT committee of the BMA and the Royal College of General Practitioners of the Choose & Book initiative.
One of the major achievements of the last session has been to establish useful channels of communication between the BMA and Connecting for Health, the agency delivering the National Programme for IT. This has included various high level meetings with senior programme staff as well as a joint conference with the Care Record Development Board held at BMA house on the 24th May. Many thanks to the BAM Conference Unit for their support in organising this event so well at so short notice. Through such meetings, whether these have been on a one:one basis or in the setting of an open conference we believe we are making real progress in achieving useful engagement between the programme and the profession. This programme is happening, it is our duty to make sure that it brings most benefit to patients as well as our own working practices and those of our NHS colleagues.
In the last session the committee has also contributed to the discussions at BMA House around confidentiality and electronic patient records. As you will know a debate on this issue follows my talk this morning. We have been pleased to work with colleagues in Ethics and across the Craft Committees to identify the key issues in this area. I will not go further into this topic here given the forthcoming debate, but it is clear that such a debate is very timely given the new information governance arrangements that will be required by a centrally-held national electronic record, and the National Programme’s decision to adopt an opt-out consent model for the sharing of confidential patient information. We need to have this debate now and I thank the Chairman for choosing this topic area for us to discuss today.
Finally I want to thank Lina Coelho and her colleagues in the secretariat for their excellent support to the committee in the last session.
