BT: leading the way in healthcare IT

BT: leading the way in healthcare IT

BT is not only the UK s largest information and communications company it is also the largest supplier of NHS Information and CommunicationsTechnology with more than 2,000 staff solely dedicated to NHS projects.

Although the national Connecting for Health programme is currently attracting attention, BT has been helping the NHS to transform the way that the thousands of individuals, departments and agencies communicate with each other and exchange information for many years. This has provided BT with invaluable experience of the needs of healthcare providers and the challenges they face as they enter the digital networked economy. That experience is currently being applied to a wide number of projects throughout the NHS, including those that make up the National Programme for IT led by NHS Connecting for Health. BT s health specialists are constantly developing and delivering innovative applications while continuing to deliver the key national services that are underpinning the modernisation of the NHS. Aside from its contracts to deliver component parts of the National Programme for IT, BT is working with the NHS to develop specific health and disease management solutions. The NHS Care Records Service As the National Application Service Provider (NASP), BT is creating the national care records database that will store electronic patient record summaries the NHS Care Records Service Spine. When completed it will be one of the largest transactional databases in the world. BT has put in place the extensive hardware and infrastructure requirements for the Spine, which will operate across three of BT s data centres. In addition, BT is conducting ongoing design reviews of the technical architecture for the care records Spine to ensure that the system continues to meet the highest standards of resilience and availability through the period of growth. Disaster recovery and business continuity services are also being built to ensure that care records remain accessible, but only to authorised personnel. The NHS Care Records Spine will integrate fully with systems from Local Service Providers and with appropriate existing systems in order to support the core services and applications to be delivered by the national and local programmes. The first of these was the Choose and Book Service, which has been followed by the Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (ETP), launched by BT with selected suppliers to pharmacies and GP practices. BT s work has provided the necessary foundations for the deployment of the patient record database, which is the next phase of the Spine programme.

BT Capital Care Alliance the LSP for London BT is the LSP for London and leads the BT Capital Care Alliance (CCA) in delivering integrated local patient record applications and systems to support more than 7.2 million potential patients; 150,000plus staff; 43 hospitals which include half of the UK s teaching hospitals; 1660 GP practices; and 13 care communities. The initial focus of the CCA has been to implement primary care systems in GP practices across the region. The first implementations have been successfully completed, and are hosted at BT s data centres. GPs who previously had obsolete computer systems, or even no systems at all, can now make appointments, manage clinical records and issue prescriptions with the new service. The first spine-enabled versions of the software have also been installed, enabling access to the Personal Demographic Service through single sign-on smart card authentication. BT has issued these cards to more than 3,000 London-based NHS staff as part of the national security system for the NHS Connecting for Health programme. London has also seen the successful deployment of core services in selected areas: the Picture Archiving and Communications Service and Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions. BT has completed the first full standalone implementation of the Interim Pathology system, and extra functionality, such as Scan and Attach that digitises all patient-related documentation and attaches it to the individual CRS, has also been enabled at certain sites. BT and the London cluster lead the way in terms of consultation and engagement with clinical and non-clinical NHS staff. Their input has helped shape the local Care Records Service across London and contributed to a series of best practices for both clinical and administrative processes. In addition, more than 30 practicing clinicians are working for the CCA, averaging more than 20 years experience each with the NHS. BT has also established a demonstration suite which provides the opportunity for selected clinicians, SHA and PCT staff to follow a fictional patient through all care stages and see how the component parts of the Care Records Service will work together.

N3 Underpinning NHS Connecting for Health s National Programme for IT is a new broadband network to connect all NHS locations in England. It will enable data to be transferred quickly and easily and support the applications and services being provided at both national and local level. BT s role in the new national network N3 is to act as integrator, and to offer the best value to the NHS through the selection of suppliers. BT will select and manage these telecoms providers to ensure that the service is delivered and supported effectively. However, BT will be applying its extensive network security expertise to N3, including anti-virus services and encryption of patient identifiable information. By March 2007 N3 will totally replace the existing BT-supplied private NHS communications network, NHSnet. The network is designed for future expansion, so that over time all healthcare professionals, including dentists, pharmacists, opticians and social services, will be able to access it. NHS Direct BT has worked in partnership with NHS Direct since its inception as a telephone health information and advice service in 1998. With a dedicated account and service support team NHS Direct are guaranteed a high quality service at all times to support their 24 hour, 365 day, a year operation. With 54 locations across England, BT provides NHS Direct with all of their inbound telephony service, routing and support through the Intelligent Call Management Platform & Network. BT handle more than 7.5 million inbound calls per year for NHS Direct and the ICM routes calls on a geographic and volume basis depending on NHS Direct s resource availability and requirements. BT also provides, maintains and monitors NHS Direct s private data network and the online link for NHS Direct s interactive web-based service. NHS Direct On-line receives over 1 million visitors per month. All of the technical links for NHS s Direct s out-of-hours services, on behalf of primary care trusts, is also provided by BT, covering over 40% of the English population. Since NHS Direct became a Special Health Authority in April 2004, BT continues to develop services for NHS Direct - as it transforms from a network to a regional operating structure. Further investment into NHS Direct s information and communications technologies is enabling them to continuously improve their services to patients. Working with BT, NHS Direct is able to realise the benefits of being an NHS service that is rooted locally with health communities but nationally connected for maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

NHS Numbers for Babies More than one and a half million babies have now been issued with their unique NHS number within hours of birth thanks to the NHS Numbers for Babies (NN4B) system introduced by BT in 2002. The NHS number helps establish accurate records of an infant s health and is a key element in any modernised health service. The system has already transformed the way that new births are recorded, cutting delays and potential mix-ups over medical records. Once a child is born, the midwife will enter the time, date and location of birth into the system, which then responds with the NHS number. An electronic copy of the birth notification, containing essential information on the baby, its mother and GP, is also sent automatically to the relevant Child Health department, and fed into the Child Health systems. Babies are now also benefiting from an addition to the NN4B service. An online link between the BT service and the Newborn Hearing Screening Service helps to ensure that no babies miss the vital new hearing tests that are available in the first few hours after they are born. The data collected by NN4B immediately after birth forms the basis of all individual care records that are stored on the central depository, and is a key element of the NHS Connecting for Health Programme.

QMAS BT has designed and built the Quality Management and Analysis System (QMAS) to enable the NHS to monitor GPs achievements against its Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF). The QOF is designed to reward GPs for improving patient services, and provides a template for practices to record how they care for patients with common chronic conditions. BT has designed QMAS to collect, analyse and report on the achievements of GP practices in England against the QOF standards. The system collates information from two separate sources to provide the fullest possible picture: clinical data comes directly from practice systems and non-clinical data is entered by the practice via the QMAS web application. The application is accessed through a standard web browser and allows GPs and other users to estimate their target achievement, or aspiration, against the QOF and monitor their attainments. An aspiration management tool allows PCTs to govern, agree and approve GP s achievements for payment. A sophisticated reporting function enables SHAs and PCTs to see appropriate levels of reports. National Cancer Research Network BT has created an electronic remote data capture (erdc) system that will support the National Cancer Research Network (NCRN) and the clinical trial units (CTUs) it works with. The erdc is a vital tool in the search for clinical excellence within oncology. It replaces the existing paper-intensive methods of recording information from the 10 to 15 visits to hospital that the typical patient makes during the course of their treatment. Rather than forms being filled out in triplicate, gathered into worksheets and posted to the CTUs, data can now be entered onto the system once, and seamlessly transferred to the trial unit. The erdc provides uniformity of data, greater accuracy of information and improved efficiency, making analysis of results quicker and more straightforward. The end goal is to reduce the time to market for treatments, making a significant contribution to the government s targets on cancer care. The system leverages BT s detailed understanding of the needs and objectives of the NCRN and its experience in delivering advanced and effective systems to healthcare providers. The next stage is to trial the system at two CTUs and then roll it out nationally in 2006/7. BT Carecall BT Carecall enables the NHS to help patients with type 2 diabetes more effectively. BT has developed specialist triage software in conjunction with Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust that provides the basis for patients to be remotely monitored via a BT contact centre. The contact centre is staffed by a Diabetes Specialist Nurse (DSN) and three telecarers, who proactively call patients in their homes to discuss their blood glucose levels and information about their general health and well being. The telecarers will then offer information about the disease and advice about management, diet and lifestyle. If needed, patients can then be referred to the DSN and follow up calls are arranged. Telecarers can refer electronically to a DSN for in-depth advice or medication adjustment. BT Carecall will integrate with both local patient records and the evolving NHS Care Records Service, and offers the ability to book consultation sessions electronically at a time convenient to the patient. By using BT Carecall the NHS can generate additional capacity to support this chronic condition through the more efficient use of specialist diabetes staff. In the longer term the increase in patient self-management and awareness will lead to a reduction in the number of diabetes-related complications. The service has been successfully trialled in Salford, and can be replicated throughout the NHS to support GPs in meeting their new QOF targets.

Converged Networks BT is helping Primary Care Trusts across the country to consolidate their communications networks and converge voice and data traffic. By replacing the multitude of separate networks that typically existed within a single PCT with a single Community of Interest Network (COIN), BT has enabled a number of trusts to rationalise their communications systems across their multiple sites and generate significant cost efficiencies as a result. The converged networks also support greater efficiencies in remote and mobile working. Health visitors and community nurses, for example, can access patient records on the move, rather than making repeat visits to their base to pick up details. BT has implemented more than 20 COINs across the North West of England, one of the largest being for Stockport PCT covering 85 separate sites. BT will also be deploying a county-wide COIN for all PCTs in Essex. BT has called on its own extensive networking experience to deliver COINs that are built on converged networks. These allow traditional voice services to be combined with data traffic. This has enabled PCTs to centralise and unify the delivery of clinical systems to GP practices: applications and services are accessed over the network, rather than having separate versions installed in each location. BT Guidion House Harvest Crescent Ancells Business Park Fleet, Hampshire GU51 2QP Offices worldwide British Telecommunications plc 2005. Registered office: 81 Newgate Street, London, EC1A 7AJ. Registered in England No. 1800000. Telephone +44 (0) 1252 777 000 Facsimile +44 (0) 1252 777 111 Email info@btsyntegra.com Web www.bt.com/health