Connectivity vital to improve patient care

The Connecting for Health’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is striving to move the NHS towards a single, centrallymandated electronic care record for patients. Part of its vision is to connect all hospitals and GPs and provide widespread secure, audited access to patient records, including diagnostic scans and images, for authorised health professionals. Progress is being made in these areas but it is moving forwards slowly. With an organisation on the scale and complexity of the NHS, it is no surprise that the task is proving hugely challenging.

Lack of interoperability

In the meantime, unfortunately – and perhaps inevitably – the lack of connectivity and interoperability which still exists between technologies at different care centres means patient information does not always move as quickly as required. Sometimes patient care suffers as a result. The experience of six-year-old Penny who was diagnosed with MPS (Mucopolysacrodosis) provides a startlingly clear example of the consequences. MPS is a rare aggressive, degenerative genetic disorder and Penny’s diagnosis was finally made at her local hospital (site 1) after she made various visits to various specialist hospitals. It started from the ophthalmic reports obtained at a London eye hospital (site 2). The ophthalmic report indicated that a build up of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) was putting pressure on the ventricles of the brain. There was a possibility that Penny could die if the pressure was not relieved and, as a consequence, she urgently needed to undergo surgery at the children’s hospital (site 3), so CT scans and X-rays were taken to aid in the surgery. Penny was to have a ventriculoperitoneal shunt inserted to equalise her CSF pressure. At the same time, she was required to have a lumbar spine MRI scan at another specialist hospital (site 4) to rule out compression of her spinal cord (a typical indication of MPS) and an echo cardiac scan at the heart hospital (site 5) to look at the condition of her heart valves. All these different hospital site visits (which exceeded five) involved various clinical reports and documents, as well as medical images. These needed to be shared with a number of clinicians as well as her original paediatrician. However, it was Penny’s parents that did the running around between the hospitals to ensure reports and images were being shared.