NHSX, the body responsible for delivering the Health Secretary’s Tech Vision is to develop an assurance service to support trusts buy standard compliant tech.
On Twitter NHSX said “We want to understand how to make sure trusts buy tech that supports interoperability in the NHS.”
It will initially focus on interoperability standards and explore how to deliver an assurance service that will support and guide trusts deliver tech inline with open standards. Over the next 4 months NHS X will be working with a select group of trusts to understand the buying process and/or to help trusts buy or build inline with mandated open standards.
Over the last 3 months, NHSX has been leading a discovery into how they can improve the way digital and technology services are built and bought by NHS organisations. NHSX has been researching how technical standards are being used and they want to ensure technology systems talk to each other.
In a blog post NHSX said “We found that technical standards are part of the more recent central health procurement frameworks, such as the Health Systems Support Framework and GP IT Futures. The use of technical standards can vary depending on a range of factors including their availability in products, affordability and local technical capability and capacity limitations.”
“We carried out 70 interviews with stakeholders and people managing IT in hospital trusts, such as Chief Information Officers. We mapped the typical buying process used by local digital and technology teams, identifying some of the pain points and opportunities for improvement. We then sketched out a technical assurance service which helps local teams to buy compliant technology.”
At the end of the next 4 months NHSX aims to put in place the right processes and guidance to support the use of mandated open standards.
In April HTN were the first to report on NHSX mandating open standards:
It's true. From July we will be mandating the use of internationally recognised tech and data standards, so our systems can talk to each other. This will save time, money and ultimately lives. https://t.co/J8YH7f9axd
— NHSX (@NHSX) April 4, 2019
Bravo @MattHancock and @NHSX team.
– Open standards.
– Open source.
– Transparency and shared methods.
– Spend controls to enforce them.We make a world where the Lego pieces can fit together.
This is how you build a digital revolution in healthcare.
https://t.co/57o28wH9eU— ben goldacre (@bengoldacre) April 5, 2019
