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Mark O’Herlihy, director of healthcare EMEA at Lexmark’s Perceptive Software, looks at how the government’s controversial initiative has sparked disparity between departments

Screen Shot 2014-01-28 at 1.06.45 PMThere are daily headlines about the seemingly poor state that the UK’s healthcare system is in. This ranges from reports of poor patient care in hospitals due to staff shortages, to tight budgets creating limited services, through to inefficient IT systems costing taxpayers money.

On top of this, the Department of Health’s ‘Digital Challenge’ scheme to create a ‘paperless NHS’ has been touted as an extremely ambitious initiative. Led by the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, there’s plenty of debate as to how much this will really improve NHS services, if it’s even achievable, and if it’s worth the cost of implementing new IT systems.

Screen Shot 2014-01-07 at 5.00.35 PMA report by a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) recently said that changes made towards a digital NHS system “has not gone to plan” and some are saying it has been an “expensive waste of time”. But what do the people working within the NHS really think over and above the on lookers?

As with too often in the past, it seems NHS IT initiatives have even split workers’ opinions and this could be detrimental to the success of the NHS paperless programme too. Our recent research with Vanson Bourne has indicated the programme isn’t going completely to plan in this way.

Screen Shot 2013-11-26 at 3.34.37 PMA significant proportion of people surveyed expect the NHS to be “paperlight” (the main place where patient records are stored) by 2018, and those who don’t see 2018 as a realistic goal for going paperless suggest 2021 is, on average, a more genuine deadline.

Out of those who haven’t already digitised 100% of patient data, over half (58%) think the process will take a further two to five years to roll out. This caution about the timetable among NHS IT decision makers and healthcare professionals contrasts with the goal of NHS going paperless by 2018, as expressed by Jeremy Hunt.

>See also: NHS trust heads demand extra funding to achieve government’s paperless initiative

On the positive side of the fence, the initiative is being welcomed by a majority (71%) of hospital workers who are in favour of going paperless – and agreement to any new IT initiative is usually half the problem.

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