By Healthcare Facilities Today

Integrating healthcare and information technology is not easy, and ensuring that the relationship can deliver will require a new approach, according to Robbie Hughes, CEO of Qinec, in a recent blog on the Information Daily website.

Technology and healthcare haven't had the easiest of relationships, Hughes said. As they've gotten to know each other better, something hasn't really clicked and a relationship that promised so much has - so far - failed to deliver.

But while headline grabbing statistics about IT losses make it easy to question healthcare's appetite for IT and how it can transform the delivery of care, I don't believe that healthcare has given up on technology and vice versa.  I simply think a new approach is needed, Hughes said in his blog.

Jeremy Hunt, the UK's Secretary of State for Health, tasked the National Health Service with becoming paperless by 2018. To reach its efficiency objectives and care targets the NHS cannot afford to become paperless simply for the sake of it. Such a move needs to bring with it real, clear and tangible benefits, Hughes said. 

Previous NHS IT initiatives have faltered because they have been conceived at a national level, procured at a national level and then rolled out from centralized government. At a regional and local level, hospitals, clinicians, GPs and Trusts have had no ownership of - or input into - these projects. And this has been the stumbling block, because the suppliers that the government contracted to do the work weren't able to tailor their systems to meet the challenges of specific organizations within public sector healthcare. 

This created a huge backlash. Clinicians felt sidelined, patients felt their data would be left exposed and vulnerable and IT suppliers were found wanting. Fast-forward to today and this stalemate means that healthcare still isn't digitized, according to Hughes.

But that is very much set to change thanks to two key factors. 

First, one of the key issues with taking advantage of new technology platforms in order to digitize healthcare is the protection of patient data. While it has always been possible to secure the data, patients weren't all together comfortable with the idea of it being shared. However, the pervasive nature of social networking into our everyday lives means that not only are individuals sharing more personal data than ever before, they are also at ease with trusting organizations to be the custodians of their data.

Second, this shift in attitudes is giving rise to new innovation within the start up community that are starting to re-engage clinicians in the possibilities of technology. 

Read the blog.