Wilkins Consultancy
Working as a business analyst for the Communications and Messaging Programme of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) Wilkins Consultancy investigated a number of areas for the National Services part of the NHS Care Record Service, including:
- developed the domain scoping document for the secondary uses of clinical data and then undertook the detailed business analysis for the early implementation phases including NWCS replacement and NSF requirements.
- analysed the messages that would update the National Spine Record.
- developed the domain scoping document for the workflow/rules service of the Spine and the use rules throughout the NCRS.
We were asked by Avon Health Authority to undertake an analysis of the opportunities to improve clinical communications between primary care and secondary care using a variety of technologies including messaging, e-mail and web-based applications. We this resulted in the development of a co-ordinated, collaborative plan for implementation of test requests and results, discharge summaries, web based referrals, encryption, across the whole Avon health community. The plan was accepted and funded by the LIS Programme Board. We then provided interim project management pending recruitment to the full time project manager post.
Wilkins Consultancy was funded by the NHS Executive Information Management Group to provide project management support to the Avon Trailblazer project for pathology EDI messages, to bring the piloting phase to a successful completion, establish a consolidated plan and introduce new management arrangements for the roll-out and widespread implementation. We were then invited by Avon Health Authority to supply the Programme Manager for the collaborative development and roll-out of clinical messaging across the Avon Community, including five hospital Trusts and up to 150 GP practices.
Wilkins Consultancy advised on the strategic direction that SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratories should take for electronic communications with NHS organisations for exchanging pathology requests and results, and screening information.
As part of the CISP III programme, Wilkins Consultancy undertook a project on systems to support Primary Health Care Teams and the information flows to support multi-disciplinary working. The study identified information flows suited to EDI and evaluated possible EDIFACT messages. As part of this study, we managed a workshop for suppliers to raise awareness of the needs of primary health care teams.
Wilkins Consultancy produced the Applications Requirements Specification for users of NHSnet, a compendium of all the major applications that may use the NHS network. For each application it identified the users, business requirement, main information flows, characteristics, size and volumes with predicted growth, communications protocols, service levels and implementation aspects.