* NEW RESEARCH * What can we learn from NHS’ ‘Choose and Book’?

When the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC) published its report on NHS waiting times for elective care in England earlier this month, it described the NHS’ electronic appointment booking system, Choose & Book, as “a missed opportunity to improve patient care and data quality”.

Readers with long memories will recall that Choose & Book was launched by the former Labour government a decade ago and fell under the auspices of the now infamous National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT).  Atos (then Sema) with partner Cerner won the five year deal that was initially worth £64.5m but was later expanded and extended a number of times to be worth more than £30m p.a.

Despite some early glitches and delays, Choose & Book ran pretty well from a technical viewpoint and was often cited as one of the more successful elements of the National Programme. Usage levels, however, have stalled and only half of all possible GP-to-first outpatient referrals are booked using the system. As Choose & Book comes to its natural end it is due to be replaced by a new NHS e-Referral Service (NHS e-RS) which – if all goes according to the latest plan – will go live this November. Testing of the first phase of e-RS will begin next month.

The new e-referrals system is very much a product of the Coalition government’s ICT strategy: procured via the G-Cloud framework, it is being built by much smaller companies (BJSS and InTechnology) using agile methodology, open source technology and open standards. The approach is the antithesis of the large, multi-million pound contract let to a big SI and its proprietary software supplier a decade ago. According to NHS England, the operating costs should be 20% of those of Choose & Book as a result.

Our latest PublicSectorViews research considers what lessons can be learnt from Choose & Book and whether the new e-Referrals service that’s set to replace it stands any better chance of success. Analysing the two very different projects also provides an excellent illustration of how UK government ICT strategy has changed over the last decade. PublicSectorViews subscribers can download NHS IT: learning lessons from ‘Choose & Book’ from today.

If you don’t yet subscribe to our PublicSectorViews research and you’d like further details, Deborah Seth from our Client Services team would be very happy to help. 

Posted by Tola Sargeant at '14:29' - Tagged: health   research