Connecting for Health

The Department of Health have centrally contracted with organisations to deliver applications to health communities and their patients. These organisations are called Local Service Providers (LSPs) and are appointed to geographical areas or clusters.

Salford is part of the North West and West Midlands cluster and the LSP is Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) Alliance. As the LSP, the CSC Alliance is responsible for delivery of a range of IT services incorporated into the contract in a specified locality. Some systems which either do not meet local standards of functionality or fall outside of the National Programme will be procured separately.

Moving to CfH systems will eventually allow multi-disciplinary teams to have access to a single record ‘the Spine’ which, over the next five years will become increasingly rich in clinical data.
The national systems will be much more resilient, secure and accessible to NHS staff. The benefit to patients is that a summary of their care record will be available wherever it is needed across the country.
These centralised summary records will also provide a rich data source for reporting health status locally and on a wider scale.

Within Greater Manchester, the area has been divided into sectors to manage the programme of investment in IT. Salford is part of the North West sector and the IT Programme Board oversees IT developments in Wigan and Bolton, as well as Salford. Working alongside neighbouring health economies brings the operational benefit of shared knowledge and experience.

The parameters of Connecting for Health have some limitations in the context of the SHIFT Programme, by overlooking the need for integration across agencies, notably with Local Authorities. This has been identified as a priority within SHIFT and is a feature of local IT developments