The goal of the Grand Challenge call was to stimulate imaginative but practical proposals for the development of technologies that could encourage major improvements in patient care in the UK. The specific goals of Safe and Sound were to integrate two successful technologies created to show how they can actively support point-of-care decision-making and clinical work-flow in multidisciplinary clinical and patient services. The specific focus is to demonstrate how they can mitigate medical error and other causes of adverse events which have been identified in the well known work of the St. Mary's team.
The project has made excellent technical progress, but an important remaining challenge is to translate these technical achievements into a practical road map for routinely exploiting the new capabilities in clinical practice. A critical task in developing the road map is to understand the priorities for and constraints on the adoption of ICT in the UK healthcare sector. As part of this task we are seeking the views of a number of influential and informed stakeholders close to the NHS, in the National Programme, and in Industry and Academia.
The stakeholder study is based on a set of structured interviews with senior players and opinion leaders from the NHS, Connecting for Health, Academia and Industry. The purpose of the interviews is to establish key views on ICT in healthcare and in particular on decision support and knowledge management services for the NHS. The interviews are being audio-taped and will be used to inform the final report and guide development of the road map
Sample questions
What do you consider to be the key priorities for ICT in healthcare?
What priority would you give to development of clinical decision support technology, what realistic benefits could be achieved within 5 years?
What priority would you give to development of clinical workflow management, what realistic benefits could be achieved within 5 years?
What kinds of evidence would most convince you that such services are effective?
What kinds of evidence would most convince you that such services are safe?
What do you consider to be the benefits / risks of the trend toward increasing patient engagement in the health service? Could ICT be usefully deployed in this area?
What do you consider to be the benefits / costs of top-down vs. locally driven changes in the health service? In your experience, which mix of influences works best?
What (if any) factors do you foresee as key risks / barriers to adoption?
