01.04.15
NHS England investing £78m in technology
NHS England has announced £78m of technology funding for health and social care providers in 2015.
Some £43m of Integrated Digital Care funding will be used by NHS trusts and local authorities to put in place electronic information systems which make sharing information between care settings easier.
The original budget of the Integrated Digital Care fund was £240m, but in January it was reported that this had been raided to help bolster the £700m winter pressures fund to help hospitals cope with the unprecedented level of demand this year.
Jeremy Hunt, however, has denied the fund has been cut in absolute terms, instead saying it was undergoing a “staged roll-out”.
When asked to clarify what this meant, the health secretary said it was a matter for NHS England.
However, NHS England’s national director for patients and information Tim Kelsey, and director of strategic systems and technology Beverley Bryant, have both said they are “disappointed” by the apparent downsizing of the fund from £240m to £43m.
When announcing the funding last week, Bryant said: “We are committed to a digital strategy to help transform health services through technology and put patients in control of their care and welcome the latest investment in the Integrated Digital Care fund which will help to digitise and integrate patient information across health and social care, enabling safer, more joined-up services.”
Approval has also been granted for the second tranche of the Nursing Technology Fund, which makes £35m available to trusts, health charities and community health providers to spend on digital services that will support nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants in their work and help them release time to care.
A full list of recipients of the Nursing Technology Fund is available on the NHS England website. Awards have gone to a range of organisations including:
- Marie Curie Cancer Care – awarded £1m for its Connected Nursing project to enable mobile access to digital care records, digital capture of clinical data at point-of-care.
- Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – awarded £646,000 for its Paperless Nurse Observations project to allow nurses, midwives and care staff to capture of vital signs and Early Warning Scores at the bedside in real-time.
- Devon Partnership NHS Trust – awarded £204,000 for its Video Consultations for Nursing Staff project to equip patients and develop proper therapeutic environments for remote consultations in a community mental health care setting.
Jane Cummings, chief nursing officer for England, said: “The Nursing Technology Fund has supported nurses, midwives and care staff to carry out valuable and innovative work, and will continue to empower staff to deliver safer, more effective and more efficient care.”
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