Process power: the benefits of business process management
Business process management (BPM) helps NHS organisations to analyse what they do - so they can start to do it better.
The key step is to integrate existing systems, to expose what is happening. Integration offers other benefits, since it extends the shelf life of existing systems and helps to create the environment in which new ones can be deployed.
Once a process has been mapped and analysed using BPM technologies, it can be reshaped to eliminate waste, save money and improve care.
One of the fascinating things about hospitals is the way they grow over time. Even the newest campus seems to sprout a treatment centre or a cluster of portable offices within a year or two of completion.
Unfortunately, NHS IT has often grown in more or less the same way. Many trusts have a plethora of systems, installed at different times and for different reasons.
These can be difficult to update and maintain. They may also fail to support modern healthcare processes.
What is business process management?
Business process management (BPM) is both a management discipline and an evolving set of technologies. Its aim is to establish goals and strategies to improve operational processes and performance.
Mike Thompson, BPM practice director at Butler Group, says it can help NHS organisations facing new targets and demands, including the rising expectations of their users.
"We have all come to expect joined-up, seamless services," he says. "But until now, the co-ordination of public service delivery has been manually driven and relied on lots of paper.
"BPM tools have a crucial role to play in supporting the communication of information and the delivery of services across NHS trusts and other public service organisations."
The tools for the job
Technically, NHS organisations looking to link up existing systems need to install an "integration engine" - a server that connects existing systems together using agreed standards, such as the HL7 series of messaging standards.
An integration engine acts as the "plumbing" through which data can flow, be captured and eventually presented back to users, so they can see what is happening at each stage of a process, such as a patient journey.
Modern solutions such as Microsoft BizTalk and BizTalk Accelerator for HL7 also offer business managers a visual dashboard to manage and monitor business processes in real time.
Making legacy systems work harder
Mr Thompson says that if they are correctly implemented, such solutions can offer a cost-effective way of getting the most out of legacy systems.
"BPM allows commercial companies and public sector organisations alike to overcome financial constraints and extend the life of their existing IT assets," he says.
"By integrating systems, you can make better use of the systems you have and create an architecture that allows you to switch in and switch out systems more easily."
"It pulls [assets] together and allows them to be used in more intuitive, process-based ways. Rather than being tied to what an application did in the past, BPM allows you to describe what you want it to do in the future."
Another reason for tackling integration now is that it puts organisations in a better position to deploy new systems, including those being delivered through the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
"The fundamental for trusts migrating [to NPfIT systems] is to get a consistent and comprehensive view of their data, and to find the simplest way of migrating it [to new data centres]," says Microsoft technology analyst Mark Treleaven.
"By integrating systems, you can make better use of the systems you have and create an architecture that allows you to switch in and switch out systems more easily."
Map route to success
Despite this, Mr Thompson believes that the basic issues facing NHS organisations today are not so different from those faced by many large businesses.
"The primary challenge for any organisation wanting to make BPM work effectively lies in the initial mapping of its processes and activities," he says.
"You have to be able to say what a process is, its definable start and end, even if that end stage may have more than one outcome. Then you have to be able to say what series of tasks and activities take place in order to complete the process."
At the moment, many processes within NHS organisations are not well understood or structured. But BPM allows them to create structure.
"In my experience, the moment organisations begin to go down the BPM route, they find ways of improving their processes almost immediately," says Mr Thompson.
Plainly, NHS managers need to think about the receptiveness of their organisations to this kind of change.
But the experience of other industries is that BPM eventually creates incentives for departments and individuals to become more productive, by responding closely to key performance indicators.
Further Reading