Groups of councils could run health IT

In response to the government's Liberating the NHS white paper, the Society for IT Management (Socitm) argues that the notion of individual local authorities as sole commissioners of IT systems "will become less and less viable over time". "Rather, collaborative, pan-local, shared approaches between local authorities, the private sector and civil society organisations, that are citizen and service outcome based, will assume greater relevance, rather than exclusively local authority based systems provided for patients and service users," says the policy briefing , published on 19 January. "Regional or sub-regional groupings of local authorities could lead in the provision of health and social care information systems for resource allocation, particularly as GP clusters take over commissioning from primary care trusts." The association goes on to say that systems to support personal health and care choices should be delivered by the market and not be centrally prescribed by the NHS, and that learning should be adopted from adult social care, where personalisation and citizen control is further advanced. Socitm president Jos Creese said: "Local authorities can play a vital part in these changes. Not only can democratically elected local politicians reflect local priorities, but local government infrastructure can be made available to assist in the join up and sharing of information which will be essential to help GPs to fulfil their new role." The briefing also calls health secretary Andrew Lansley's plans on bringing together health and social care information for service users and professionals at the point of service delivery, "weak". However, it acknowledges that the government's white paper is "strong on service user engagement and empowerment and on proposals for standards within health". It continues that top down, large scale, supply and technology-led approaches to information management and systems have failed to deliver effective outcomes because they have not involved patients, service users, clinicians, care professionals and the public in their development and implementation. Socitm suggests that if these systems are to be effective they need to bring together a range of elements including: - citizen and staff ID and authentication; - person-based health and social care records, at least at summary level; - self-directed support, including direct payment facilities; - local authority details, where assessments or care plans are agreed with the local authority, including a self-assessment tool; - private care assessment services, where assessments or care plans are developed with a private provider, or relatives/friends; - personal care plans as shared with carers; - specialist sources of information, such as Age UK, CancerHelp UK, Mencap; and - health services information. "Liberating the NHS is based on principles of personalisation and putting patients and service users in control and attempts to set out the implications for information systems spanning health and adult social care," said Martin Ferguson, Socitm head of policy. "Unfortunately, the document is based largely on health care experience, which is less well developed in respect of personalisation and citizen control than is social care. Further, unlike health care, most adult social care is commissioned and funded privately, often by patients and service users themselves. Our response identifies some different approaches based on this experience." The government published its health and social care bill on the 19 January. A central part of the bill involves abolishing PCTs and SHAs by April 2013, with healthcare commissioning in England taken over by GP commissioning consortia. This article is published by Guardian Professional. Join the Guardian Healthcare Network to receive regular emails on NHS innovation.