Yesterday, The King’s Trust presented a live webcast to discuss and dissect the various positives and constraints about the computerisation of the healthcare sector. Speaking on behalf of the Department of Health, Head of Long Term Conditions Stephen Johnson spoke at length about what is expected of new technology in the health service, and what is often neglected at the cost of the technical growth of organisations at a time when computerisation is not only desirable, but increasingly necessary.

Encouraging healthcare organisations to think more about their moves to computerisation, he said; “Think: Why technology? Why are you developing? Start here and work forwards from there. People have gone to suppliers, purchased services and technological equipment and software licenses, and then had no idea what to do. Starting by asking what you actually want and expect from your technology will help roll out projects in a meaningful way.”

“The key to success,” he said, “Is to look at the service changes and then think about how you can implement equipment. Think beyond whole system technology, and think large scale. How can people best benefit? Why do you want to provide a different approach?”

Of course, in most cases healthcare organisations and NHS Trusts want to computerise their records for many reasons – for better document management, to incorporate eForms into their everyday documentation, to help make the saving, collection, governance and navigation of documents and data. They know why they want to use new technology, but they don’t know how. Or perhaps they even know how, but their technology gets implemented badly or inefficiently, and this results in an electronic system that works as well as, if not worse than the existing paper-based system.

We’ve always said that correctly implementing a solution and teaching users how to get the best out of their system is the best way to find the value in new technologies. As Mr Johnson said; “The more widely a system is implemented, the more it’s used, the more people like it, and people will begin to use it. The more they use it, the more other organisations will want to use it too.”

This, we thought, closely follows a model we’ve used for a long time when it comes to dealing with clients: Awareness, interest, desire, action. You lose the interest, you lose the action, and interest can be stoked by the correct deployment of training and ‘evangelism’ days.

Technology isn’t just important to the future of the health service – NHS SharePoint projects save time and money, and they can help reduce errors, data loss and even unnecessary patient referrals (see our Kinesis fact sheet for more details). The NHS deserves to move into the 21st century, and patients deserve to be treated with the latest technologies and services to hand.

We train in various ways depending on the needs of customers: meet the expert days, on-demand video casts and live meetings, we can provide launch resources, and we can deliver training, to educate and emphasise that the responsibility to make a technology project a success rests with the business. Training can take you to the next level of computerisation, but keeping up your level of knowledge rests with those who wish to use it.