Ethitec backs call for radical NHS transformation through interoperable IT

Healthcare IT specialist, Ethitec, is among the first companies to have signed up to a charter calling for system providers to work together to help achieve the vision of radical service transformation set out by NHS England’s CEO, Simon Stevens, in its Five Year Forward View.

The ‘Health and Social Care Interoperability Charter’, launched last month by techUK, lists five public commitments for IT providers to honour in order to ensure the provision of more open, integrated systems, enabling the free-flow of patient information between products, and overcoming the traditional boundaries between primary, secondary, community and social care.

Ethitec’s Managing Director, Simon Taylor, commented: “As a signatory, we’re making clear our determination to help tackle the lack of integration across the NHS, and to continue to produce software that doesn’t just meet, but actively supports, current policy needs and the aspirations of the market.

“The adoption of true interoperability will release clinicians from the current predominance of ‘one size fits all’ enterprise systems, and allow them to choose the best software for their requirements.”

The charter’s five commitments are designed to deliver improvements in the care and wellbeing of citizens, reductions in service delivery costs and increased productivity within the NHS. NHS England supports the charter and, for services procuring new systems, its list of partners will guide them to which suppliers are committed to the data standards and system interoperability that the NHS calls for.

Full details of the charter can be found here. The five commitments are as follows:

• We will make available to other suppliers and the NHS, the technical specifications of our interfaces without charge

• Where there is customer demand we agree to co-operate without charge with other suppliers in developing interfaces

• We will not reinvent the wheel and will use internationally recognised standards where relevant

• We will only charge reasonable and proportionate fees to the end user organisation for Licensing, Implementation and Support services required for the interfaces

• Where new interfaces or enhancements to existing interfaces are required, we will not charge the NHS twice for the same software development

Ethitec is the software house behind the integrated appointment booking and electronic patient record solution, Tiara9, which is accredited by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) to receive e-referrals (e-RS) directly from GPs.

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