Life on Marsland visits Smart Healthcare
Iain Marsland is a veteran of healthcare IT shows. Smart Healthcare was on at Earl’s Court recently. How could he resist?
I have something of a phobia about the London Underground. Although it’s proved possible to overcome, I take no joy in rattling along in a tunnel with 3 million other people, especially at this time of year, when there is no air-conditioning.
However, you only appreciate something when it’s gone. The RMT union’s recent strike made my visit to the Smart Healthcare exhibition difficult and frustrating enough to appreciate the tube when it’s working properly. On the up side, once I got there, I almost had Earls Court to myself.
Stands and themes
Smart Healthcare was run simultaneously with GC Live and Procurement Solution Live, the public sector and government procurement trade shows, with healthcare taking up only one third of the stands. Even so, it seemed eerily quiet.
The last time I was at Earl’s Court, it was packed in honour of the goddess that is Kylie. I don’t expect there to be quite as many healthcare technology fans as Kylie fans, but having the show run at the same time as the NHS Confederation conference in Liverpool was particularly unfortunate timing. Coinciding with an RMT strike just added to their bad luck.
Still there were around 60 healthcare stands with an eclectic mix of technology and solution vendors, consultancies and telcos. Long standing Healthcare Computing contributors were there (for many years, Healthcare Computing in Harrogate was the only decent trade show).
"The last time I was at Earl’s Court, it was packed in honour of the goddess that is Kylie.”
Only one Local Service Provider (LSP) was present, but it had a big stand. Indeed, the LSP and other system integrators appeared to have the largest stands - but this was because they were there for the public sector and government procurement delegates as well as us healthcare attendees.
Three major themes were evident to me: voice recognition / dictation systems; front and back end integration of legacy systems; and electronic patient record systems. These events are not cheap for suppliers. So these themes provide some indication of NHS and supplier interest, even if there weren’t that many people around.
Voice Recognition: Voice recognition has been around for some time and is used most extensively in the NHS in radiology. The technology is becoming commonplace for command lines in mobile phones and executive cars, and in the medical context, voice command lines will be particularly useful in theatre. Microsoft Vista has its own speech recognition software, which can be used for command lines and dictation.
The Care Record Service (CRS) being developed by the National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT) will bring a whole new set of user interface challenges as doctors and nurses are encouraged to use IT to record all patient decisions, orders and schedules.
“I have a year’s stock of 1Gb USB drives, pens, pencils, bouncy balls that light up when they land on the floor, mouse mats, mugs and tins of mints.”
Smart technologies including touch screens, voice recognition and the sophisticated motion detectors that are now standard in many gaming machines will compete for clinicians’ attention, to improve their experience of clinical IT in day-to-day use.
Legacy Integration: Few trusts would consider replacing their legacy systems (their existing patient administration system, pharmacy, radiology, pathology and other departmental IT) when they implement an electronic patient record.
During the current interregnum in getting NPfIT systems in place, the data locked away in these systems can be made available through smart front-ends that ‘appear’ to provide clinicians with a portal to integrated patient data.
Often the system is nothing more than a pass-through single logon to multiple systems, which retain their different look and feel. But some trusts have developed their own web-based front ends that further enhance the user experience with a more unified look and feel. Such systems can only be seen as temporary until a fully integrated CRS is available.
Electronic Patient Records: The presence of new electronic patient records, however, is interesting and relevant. Many companies have developed products, mostly for foreign markets where the restrictions of NPfIT do not apply.
The delay in CRS has enabled the more forward-thinking suppliers to make those products available through the Additional Supply Capability and Capacity framework catalogue (ASCC) and more traditional procurement routes to trusts that want to address their Quality of Care agenda by using modern clinical IT.
Hope on the horizon
I left loaded down with freebies and goody bags. I have a year’s stock of 1Gb USB drives, pens, pencils, bouncy balls that light up when they land on the floor, mouse mats, mugs and tins of mints. All for my family, of course.
Several of the suppliers that were at Smart Healthcare were also covering the Confederation conference. Exhibiting in two places at once shows some confidence in the health IT market; and the expanding range of choices ought to be good news for the NHS.
Perhaps, if procurement restrictions are relaxed further in the autumn, the upcoming EHI Live event in Birmingham and next year’s Healthcare Computing (which is rumoured to be moving to London) will be trade shows back at full strength. Let’s hope our transport system is willing to get people to them...
About the author: Iain Marsland has been in the NHS for 34 years, most recently as chief information officer for Essex Strategic Health Authority and previously as director of IM&T for acute trusts in Brighton, Sussex and Bristol. He is now an independent consultant.
Read more about the NHS Confederation conference: The Microsoft NHS Resource Centre was up in Livepool while Iain was in London. Read our conference report.