Meeting the QIPP data challenge

Whoever wins the coming general election, the NHS is going to find itself operating in a tougher financial climate. In order to make savings while delivering on Lord Darzi’s vision of a high quality, personalised NHS, trusts are being encouraged to pursue the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) agenda.

John Gobron, general manager for Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group, argues that every point of QIPP requires good information. Data is needed to improve the quality of clinical decision making, to set baselines for innovation projects, to get a grip on productivity and to draw up effective prevention campaigns.

Unfortunately, data within the NHS tends to be held in disparate systems, from which it is hard to extract, collate and interpret. Microsoft Amalga Unified Intelligence System takes a unique approach by parsing feeds of data from existing systems to address this challenge and create a single platform from which their information can be used for clinical, research and operational decision making.

Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust recently became the first in the UK to adopt Amalga UIS 2009. David Powell, the trust’s head of information management and technology, says it will be used to give clinicians a single view of patient data. In the future, Amalga UIS 2009 will also be used to give the trust better information on its use of beds, staff and other resources, to help it plan for the challenges ahead.

For further information on Amalga UIS please contact Alex Gray, Senior Product Marketing Manager EMEA, Microsoft Health Solutions Group: alex.gray@microsoft.com.

Featured articles

	Productivity and prevention; the NHS’s challenge Data is the lifeblood of any organisation and the NHS is no exception to that rule. Microsoft Amalga Unified Intelligence System collates data from legacy systems, making it available to clinicians and managers to improve decision making and inform the QIPP agenda.
	Q&A: John Gobron, general manager for Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group John Gobron argues that every part of the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention agenda requires data. Unfortunately, he says, much health service data is locked up in ‘siloed’ systems. What trusts need - and what ‘next generation’ IT systems will deliver - is ‘liquid data’ that trusts can display and use effectively.
	Case study: Microsoft and Milton Keynes Hospital Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is the first UK customer for Microsoft Amalga UIS 2009. David Powell, the trust’s head of information management and technology, says a key attraction of the technology was that it works with legacy systems instead of requiring a ‘rip and replace’ approach.