By Julian Osborne, IMS MAXIMS.The last month saw the major NHS systems' integration and IT services provider, 2e2, go into administration. The company has faced a turbulent time over the last twelve months and there were indications of future trouble. Yet the signing of new deals with high profile NHS organisations made it look, at least on the surface, that 2e2would pull through.
The biggest concern for those trusts using the company's services, many who relied solely on them to support their entire IT infrastructure, will undoubtedly be around business continuity. How will they continue to provide the same level of service themselves? How can they ensure that their IT applications, many of them now critical for the trust's operations and more importantly to provide patient care, are not disrupted?
These are all valid and important questions that need answering but I wonder whether they would be asked if the NHS hadn’t chosen to outsource to a commercial company and instead it looked to other local trusts for support.
Several years ago, numerous NHS trusts desperately needed an external IT services provider to support their organisation, often they did not have the head count, capability nor the expertise in-house to ensure that they could implement, run and host the increasing systems that they needed.
Turn the clock forward to 2013 and I question whether, in today's evolving and slightly more commercially focused NHS, trusts could pull on each other to do this themselves. Opportunities exist if trusts communicated in such a way where local NHS organisations understood each others requirements, worked in partnership, shared IT services, drew on resources when required, and perhaps most importantly, provided back-up systems for each other and hosted each other's data.
This doesn't even need to happen with a trust's next-door neighbour, services could be mirrored locally and even regionally, reducing duplication, cutting costs and potentially providing far greater stability ensuring that patient data is readily available and in turn accessible at the point of care.
On top of that it would help NHS organisations, many of which may now be reluctant to outsource to such IT providers, to de-risk the situation. Although recent months have seen trusts put into administration, it is highly unlikely that NHS organisations will experience the same type of issues as 2e2.
Traditionally, technology professionals used to join the NHS, gain experience and then head off to the private sector (often only to be re-employed as a commercial entity). This is happening less and less as talent appears to be far more greatly embedded in the NHS. Now the NHS needs to empower its champions to be more commercially minded and ambitious.
There are a number of organisations already pushing boundaries in this area, for example St Helen's and Knowsley Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is already working with IMS MAXIMS to host data from other healthcare organisations, not only within the NHS but also the private sector.
The trust is ready and willing to work with other like-minded organisations, public or private and better understand how it can cross-sell its IT systems and services into the NHS and private market.
Of course, there is a time and a place where organisations, such as 2e2 are of crucial importance to NHS organisations in need of their support and expertise; but my question is that in a risk averse NHS, is it simply less risky and more beneficial all round to invest in leveraging the knowledge and IT of our fellow NHS organisations?
About IMS MAXIMS
About IMS MAXIMS IMS MAXIMS is an electronic patient record provider working towards better, safer patient care. Specialists in developing clinical and administrative software solutions for healthcare providers, IMS MAXIMS currently supports more than 150 organisations, 11 million patient records in the UK, and 1.9 million patient records in Ireland, approx 50% of the population, as well as 20,000 users of IMS MAXIMS products.
MAXIMS is at the heart of the clinical and administrative life of everything from large UK and Irish hospitals, to small specialist independent clinics. It gives patient data to clinicians in exactly the format they need, and allows it to be shared with colleagues and updated in real-time. MAXIMS suits any clinical specialism and is excellent for order communications and reporting. Medical and administrative records can be kept fully up to date, with the minimum of effort. MAXIMS is web-based so there is no need to install software on computers or invest in expensive extra hardware.