By Steve Ranger, 19 January 2006 14:25
NEWS
The Spine
The Spine is part of the NHS Care Records Service; it is the central database where summary patient records are stored. Local records will automatically upload important information to the summary patient record on the Spine.
Only NHS staff, equipped with smartcards and pin numbers, will be able to access information on the Spine. A messaging system directs requests for patient details to the various parts of the Spine where the information is held, and retrieves the details.
The Spine also supports Choose and Book and the Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions.
What progress so far?
There are 175,320 users registered for access to the Spine, although it is not carrying the levels of traffic it will when applications such as Choose and Book and electronic prescriptions are running at full speed.
Even so there have been early difficulties - downtime with the Spine over the Christmas period had a knock-on effect on the other systems that rely on it, such as Choose and Book.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Um, interesting. Some points raised differ from what the reality.
Trusts are being pushed into CRS with no reguard to existing functionality or cost of moving to the new system.
Choose and Book is a complete failure, with all rollouts being stopped in our area, and existing users being told that they can stop using the system if they want to.
The N3 rollout success depends on what you mean by connected. BT have a different meaning of that phrase than most.
PACS is in, and working with a few glitches. The project was painfull however.
Setting users up on the Spine is a slow and painfull business, with a lot of resistance from users.
The Contact email system is slow and clumbersom, and not very user friendly.
You have missed of a few major national projects, such as the Electronic Staff Record, Shares Business Service and Integrated Comunity Equipment Services, all heading for their own show stopping problems if we're not carefull.
Overall, a nightmare for NHS IT Staff.
2. anonymous
Haven't seen any evidence of this in use yet.
3. matthew
How do you find out which IT companies are involved in these NHS -IT projects like choose and book? there seems to be problems with payment that is affecting accenture, but i can't find out or see who the other companies affected are - so its hard to judge if its bad NHS management of projects, or poor delivery by the companies that is the problem?
what does everyone else think on this issue?