NHS fears government ‘paperless’ deadline says OpenText

With the deadline to meet the government’s paperless healthcare initiative looming, nearly half of CIOs and directors (46 percent) at NHS trusts and other organisations are “concerned” about meeting the government deadline.

With less than four years to go until the 2020 deadline, two-fifths (39 percent) of health chiefs report that patient records are not currently digitised within their organisation. This is despite 78 percent saying that digitising patient records would benefit their organisation.

OpenText, the enterprise information management (EIM) vendor, surveyed respondents from 115 NHS trusts and other NHS organisations. Access to data and information from any location, at any time, and on any device (30 percent), and the ability to access data and information faster (31 percent) were cited as the main benefits from going paperless.

It is also clear that mobile and wearable technology is key to future strategy and unlocking these benefits, with 70 percent of NHS organisations stating there is scope for wearables to be introduced in the coming years. And over half (55 percent) plan to increase the use of mobile and/or wearable technology used by staff members.

But several barriers to implementing a paperless environment were cited:

· A lack of suitable technology already within the organisation (49 percent)
· A lack of in-house skills to implement a paperless initiative (56 percent)
· Budget restrictions (75 percent)

Mark Bridger, vice president of sales UK at OpenText, said: “It’s important to note that it’s not too late for organisations to start implementing digital strategies to meet the 2020 deadline, and the government’s paperless initiative should be seen as just one part of a journey towards fully digital healthcare provision.”

He said: “My advice would be to think about how your organisation is going to manage all this new data created in a digital healthcare system beyond 2020. Take a step back to see the enterprise as a whole – identifying where the paper is, engaging all members of staff at all levels and thinking about process flows.”

At the back end of last year, OpenText said it was looking for system integrators, managed service providers and resellers to share the cloud service spoils about to be generated by its full adoption of the cloud for its EIM products.

@AntonySavvas