Inside e-health: looking out for a champion

Modernising the health service and using IT to enable change is tough at the best of times; sometimes, champions are needed. The Healthcare ICT Champion of the Year is all about recognising and celebrating unsung heroes, says Jon Hoeksma.   

In November,  votes will be counted in two big elections. One count will elect the next leader of the Free World (or at least the United States of America).

The other will elect the Healthcare ICT Champion of the Year for 2008; a category of the BT e-Health Insider awards, sponsored by Microsoft’s UK healthcare team.

True, one will get more international attention than the other. But both will be keenly fought. And, unlike the US presidential election, readers of the Microsoft NHS Resource Centre have the opportunity to influence the outcome of the second poll.

Potential Healthcare ICT Champions of the Year are nominated by readers of the E-Health Insider website. After extensive vetting (which includes asking them whether they are happy for their names to go forward), a final short-list of candidates is published. EHI readers and Microsoft NHS Resource Centre users are then are asked to vote online.

Although this year’s list of seven candidates was only published a fortnight ago, more than 500 votes have already been cast. So if you haven’t voted yet, act now.

Why we need champions

The NHS is one of the most complex enterpises in the world, with thousands of constituent units and over a million staff supporting or directly providing a wide range of treatments and ongoing care.  An enterprise this complex, with a budget of almost £100 billion, does not change easily. 

Delivering the reforms set out in Lord Darzi’s recent review of the health service – or just a good, local idea for making things better for staff and patients – may need many champions. They will range from non-conformists asking the difficult questions to passionate advocates of new ideas. 

Promoting the use of any new technology, meanwhile, requires leaders at different stages of the “adoption curve”, which applies whether the technology is mobile phones, DVDs, FaceBook or the NHS Care Records Service.

This curve begins with a few enthusiasts talking about the latest gadget and how it could revolutionise some part of their work or lives. They are follwed by the vast majority of people, who take up a technology once it’s settled down and proved itself a bit.

Then, at the end of the curve there is a long tail of reluctant and sometimes hesitant adopters. Each stage needs often unsung champions.

This applies particularly in the health service. Early enthusiasts see past the difficulties and problems of changing established working practices and dealing with the inevitable glitches of first release software. Then advocates convince the majority that the benefits really do outweigh the pain, inconvenience and disruption of change. 

But crucially the laggards need champions. Just because they are the last to adopt doesn’t make them any less important. Indeed, they may need champions more than anyone else.

Their objections may be perfectly logical. In clinical teams, they can often be the most experienced and senior clinicians, who are faced with having to learn new technology in the latter stages of their career.  They need peers to convince them that change is worthwhile.

They may also have read about or seen problems with early systems. They need champions to persaude them that technology can work and is working and has made a difference elsewhere.

The candidates

The winner of last year’s Healthcare ICT Champion of the Year award was Dr Mike Bainbridge from NHS Connecting for Health. He scooped the prize for his work advocating IT since the 1980s and for his support of the Common User Interface programme - the work led by Microsoft to make IT easier to deploy and easier and safer to use.

This year’s candidates reflect the breadth of healthcare in the UK, with candidates from NHS trusts, a hospice, GPs, leading suppliers and a clinical lead from NHS Connecting for Health. They are:

• Sue Rushbrook, head of systems and network services, York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Manpreet Pujara, National Clinical Lead for General Practice, NHS Connecting for Health
• Matthew Miliffe, Information Solution Architect, Cerner
• Mary Hawking, GP, Bedfordshire
• Darren Holmes, director of ICT, St Barnabas’ Hospice, Lincoln
• Rob Chesters, i-health manager, Medilink West Midlands
• Phil Browne, director of Informatica Systems and author of Front Desk.

You can read all about the nominees on the E-Health Insider website. To cast your vote, simply click on the name of the person you think deserves to win and enter your e-mail address. A confirmatory e-mail will be sent to your inbox and clicking the link contained in the e-mail message will activate your vote.

Voting closes on 16 November. So don't delay, cast your vote today!