October 17th, 2016 – Gary Britnell, who leads the work in the NHS for SynApps, has published an article that puts the recent announcements by the Secretary of State for Health at the Health and Social Care Innovation Expo in Manchester in context.

Britnell explains how the speech is our clearest indication yet of what the NHS will look like as the extra £4.2bn the government has allocated to new IT comes on-stream.

These include the 12 first Exemplars, the opening up of official NHS apps, and a major refresh of the main NHS website – but for Trusts, especially any looking to build IDCRs (Integrated Digital Care Records), more pressing might be the demand for, “Instant access to personal health records online” and, “More interactive, local information about the performance of health services [so] patients can see how the performance of their local services has changed over time.”

According to Gary, the message for the NHS IT leader from Manchester is coming through loud and clear: data, and that it’s useless unless it is made interoperable and securely shareable, which is where SynApps’s work on IDCR is going to help, he argues.

To read Gary’s helpful overview go here