Medical Directorate Medical Director

NHS Grampian

Summerfield House

Eday Road

Aberdeen

AB15 6RE

Miss L Hall
Assistant Board Secretary
NHS Grampian
Summerfield House
2 Eday Road
Aberdeen
AB15 6RE / Date: 29 March 2010
Your Ref:
Our Ref:RSD/PB/1263
Enquiries to: Pam Buckingham, Personal Assistant
Extension: 58412
Direct Line: 01224 558412
E-mail:

Dear Lesley

e-Health Committee Report to the Board

The e-Health Committee met on 26 March 2010 and I would wish to bring the following issues discussed at that meeting to the Board’s attention.

  1. Patient Management System (PMS) – the procurement phase of the Patient Management System (PMS) Project has been completed and a national framework contract was signed on 29 January 2010. Work continues for NHS Grampian to sign a contract by the end of April 2010. The preparatory work for implementation of the PMS has commenced with the development of the Scottish Foundation System of TRAK with both consortium and local level governance arrangements in place.
  1. Performance of the Vision Clinical System – over the last 10 weeks there have been performance issues relating to the Vision Clinical System in a number of GP practices across NHS Grampian. The issues appear to be mainly affecting larger practices. As a result of the difficulties, the clinical system slows down causing operational problems in the practices involved. The NHS Grampian e-Health Department and the Vision provider (InPS) are working together to determine whether the difficulties are resulting from problems with the infrastructure hardware or problems with the Vision clinical system software. Good progress with this investigation is being made and we would hope to resolve the problems within the next couple of weeks. Until the issues relating to the general performance are completely resolved, the roll-out of new applications that will integrate with the Vision clinical system (e.g. AMS, Scriptswitch, eGIF and CMS) will be delayed.

3./

  1. Freedom of Information and Data Protection – NHS Grampian has managed significantly improved response times in respect of Freedom of Information enquiries. NHS Grampian has also completed its programme to encrypt laptops. The take-up of the computer-based training package of Information Governance has been impressive with 3500 uptakes so far. This e-Learning approach is worthwhile for consideration in respect of other aspects of NHS Grampian’s mandatory staff training programme.

Yours sincerely


Councillor Kate Dean

Chair e-Health Committee