tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
The rush to deal with a possible swine flu pandemic led to an IT system that was nearly complete after two years work being cannibalised into a flu system in seven days intense work.
"We were told, what can you do in a week?" Ronnette Lucraft, chief operating officer of NHS Direct and operations director of the now shuttered National Pandemic Flu Service, told delegates at this week's HC2010 health IT conference.
The two years of work that had already gone into a system for dealing with a national medical emergency was still 35 days from completion but was able to provide the framework to get a response in place, she added.
As a result NHS Direct trained 3,500 call handlers, put live a website, set up a recorded information line and established 3,000 drug collection points in a very short time.
Lucraft said the system is an example of how IT can be used to save front line healthcare costs as it handled nearly 3m assessments between its opening on 23 July 2009 and 11 February 2010 ? work which would have occupied 10,000 GPs while 44% of patients assessed their condition online, costing ?pennies, compared to about ?10 for each phone call,? she said.
Part of the aim of the emergency project was to ensure that the country's stock of drugs did not vanish within the first week of the epidemic, when serious forecasts predicted millions of cases and even deaths.
The system is still proving useful even after the panic has abated around H1N1. "We have much better plans now on how we might deal with these things... I think it's been a jolly good dress rehearsal for what might happen in the future."
http://www.publictechnology.net/sector/nhs-health/uk-swine-flu-it-system-built-just-week
"We were told, what can you do in a week?" Ronnette Lucraft, chief operating officer of NHS Direct and operations director of the now shuttered National Pandemic Flu Service, told delegates at this week's HC2010 health IT conference.
The two years of work that had already gone into a system for dealing with a national medical emergency was still 35 days from completion but was able to provide the framework to get a response in place, she added.
As a result NHS Direct trained 3,500 call handlers, put live a website, set up a recorded information line and established 3,000 drug collection points in a very short time.
Lucraft said the system is an example of how IT can be used to save front line healthcare costs as it handled nearly 3m assessments between its opening on 23 July 2009 and 11 February 2010 ? work which would have occupied 10,000 GPs while 44% of patients assessed their condition online, costing ?pennies, compared to about ?10 for each phone call,? she said.
Part of the aim of the emergency project was to ensure that the country's stock of drugs did not vanish within the first week of the epidemic, when serious forecasts predicted millions of cases and even deaths.
The system is still proving useful even after the panic has abated around H1N1. "We have much better plans now on how we might deal with these things... I think it's been a jolly good dress rehearsal for what might happen in the future."
http://www.publictechnology.net/sector/nhs-health/uk-swine-flu-it-system-built-just-week