Christmas over, 'sales' in full swing, New Year rushing towards us, and the prospect of a damp and bleak January ahead...
Bah humbug!
Thankfully the end of the world proved another false alarm and no reprieve from a full surgery, but NHS services in Primary Care we will see a gathering pace towards the changes that accompany Clinically Led Commissioning under the NHS Commissioning Board.
The end of March will also see the formal end of 'Connecting for Health', and reading many commentaries you could easily surmise that few will mourn the passing. But hidden under headlines of inefficiency and misguided strategy are considerable nuggets of success. Of course I am biased - but most of the successful elements had significant clinical influence and 'buy-in' leading to useful and USED developments. I hope this lesson is retained in future structures and plans.
Only two predictions for 2013 in the field of Primary Care informatics:
1) Patient 'on-line' interaction with primary care will increase significantly, with politicians claiming vindication of patient power and clinicians claiming a victory for common sense and professional responsiveness, but primary care services remaining under ever increasing strain to deal with basic reactive healthcare, rising demand and expectation, let alone aspirations for proactive and preventative work.
2) 'Open Data' as an agenda for change using the immense and hitherto lightly utilised primary care database will become a heated high profile debate, polarising opinion and distracting from worthy aims. As a clinician I am struck by the challenge from the single 'headline' within the 'Power of Information' documentation - 'Nothing about me without me'. In terms of individual access to our own GP records this is translated into a right of easy on-line access to our electronic records, but what is the converse implication for central collation and use of 'our' data for secondary purposes as demanded by the 'Patients and Information' directorate of NHS CB? In particular what restrictions do I as a citizen and patient want to see applied to MY identifiable health data?
I do not have the answers to the last question, but add the observation that electronic clinical records usually reflect a private and very personal patient - carer relationship that is appropriate to share between those parties, but indiscriminate wider sharing (and in particular publication) carries significant risks for this fundamental relationship of trust.
So more interesting times ahead
Happy New Year!
Peter S.
