Digital assist of ICBs requires system-wide focus – Birmingham case

Digital assist of built-in care boards (ICBs) must deal with the targets of the general system moderately than its constituent components, members of the Birmingham and Solihull ICB group informed a Friday morning session at Digital Well being Summer season Faculties 2023. 

“Within the ICB, it’s actually essential to guarantee shut engagement and buy-in at every stage,” mentioned Professor Daniel Ray, chief expertise officer and DPO of Birmingham Ladies’s and Youngsters’s NHS Basis Belief.  

“We have to be certain that the organisation technique matches with the system technique, ensuring that what we’re setting out is constant not simply with or organisation however with different organisations we work with within the system round us.” 

The system’s first digital technique included 5 strategic goals: eliminating well being disparities, collaboration throughout organisations; implementation of a shared care file; digital options to enhance well being outcomes and care high quality; and an emphasis on cyber security. 

Nick O’Reilly, director of digital on the ICB, famous that it takes time and wholesome challenges to construct good system management, and that you will need to talk the concept groups outperform people. He added: “Very often it may be a lot simpler to compete with one another than to collaborate with one another.”  

The most important challenges ICBs face need to do with capability and assets, O’Reilly mentioned. He added: “So long as these are localised, it’s arduous to do system-wide tasks. Pooling capability, abilities and assets will permit us to do much more.” 

Shared data a “nuts and bolts” challenge

Dr. James Reed, a guide psychiatrist and chief scientific data officer at Birmingham & Solihull Psychological Well being NHS Basis Belief, mentioned the implementation of a shared care file on the belief, for which he was scientific lead.

The file system was arrange rapidly in March 2020 to serve the Nightingale Hospital, which was constructed for the pandemic however by no means used. 

“It was a nuts-and-bolts achievement displaying what may be accomplished while you need to do one thing,” he mentioned, including that the file system was constructed on a mental-health data sharing system.

“Somewhat than doing [the records] in an emergency panic state of affairs, we have been in a position to do them in a extra measured method,” he mentioned. “A bit just like the Demise Star, the system is below building however totally operational.”  

Along with the remainder of the ICB, the shared data have an interface with Birmingham Metropolis Council. Birmingham jail and hospices even have entry. Two neighbouring areas – Hereford and Worcestershire Well being and Care and Coventry and Warwickshire, expressed curiosity in doing the identical work, Reed mentioned; now all three are utilizing the identical system.  

Breaking the silos round pathways and protocols can also be a key a part of ICB digital management, mentioned Masood Nazir, medical director built-in care and Chief Scientific Info Officer at Birmingham and Solihull ICB, including that digital leaders want to decide on the appropriate group, with depth of expertise. 

Clinicians in a digital function additionally want to make sure that they aren’t excluded from essential choices, he mentioned: “Be on the proper tables. If you’re not there with the proof, change will occur to you. Information sharing is very essential to assist clinicians make “information choices, moderately than subjective ones,” he mentioned. 

Ray agreed that linked information methods are basic to understanding outcomes throughout the ICB. 

He mentioned: “An funding choice needs to be taken inside an entire system, not only a single organisation. Make sure that change is sustainable.” 

He additionally recounted his organisation’s expertise with introducing an digital affected person file (EPR) system. 

“Taking care of a gaggle zero hospital and going by enterprise case course of, the community actually helped,” he mentioned. He added that trusts going by the method on the identical time may assist each other, with these barely additional forward speaking to others and explaining the time scales and what to be careful for.

Digital Health Summer Schools is going down on the College of Birmingham, the place CCIOs, CIOs, CNIOs and aspiring digital well being leaders take pleasure in two days of CPD-accredited content material, rewarding schooling, networking, and finest follow alternate, and have a novel alternative to study from the perfect digital well being leaders from throughout the UK.