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 undertook a requirements analysis project, funded by the NHS Executive London Regional office, to identify the information requirements to support an Intermediate Care EPR. The second phase of the project continued to develop migration plans to meet the needs in the PCTs/London Boroughs of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey.
For Avon Health Authority, Wilkins Consultancy undertook an analysis of the requirements, and developed a Primary Care Group Information Framework to enable PCGs to begin operations based on electronic communications and shared systems. With the permission of Avon HA, this work was re-used with Barnet HA to develop an Information and Communications Framework for Primary Care Groups, and we then provided the project management of the implementation.
Wilkins Consultancy led a project for West London Mental Health NHS Trust, to develop an Output Based Specification for the procurement of clinical systems to support Community Care, Mental Health and Forensic Services. For the same Trust, we also produced a requirements analysis for a training needs and course booking system across the Trust.
Working with Bedford & Shires Health and Care NHS Trust, we developed a requirements analysis of primary and community healthcare professionals, GPs, and Trust managers for a computerised information system to support staff working in locality teams. The requirements included support for primary healthcare teams, multi-disciplinary teams and portable/mobile devices. Interviews, workshops and open sessions were held with a large number of clinicians. The Statement of Requirements was used to procure a pilot system which was implemented in one locality.
As part of the CISP III programme, Wilkins Consultancy undertook two projects on systems to support Primary Health Care Teams. The first studied a variety of primary health care teams to model how they provided care, their functional requirements and needs for sharing information. We also examined available systems to identify unmet needs and developed technical architectures that could meet the requirements. The findings and conclusions were tested at a series of workshops and the documents were published by CISP. The second study covered two major areas of information for primary health care teams. The first area identified information flows suited to EDI and evaluated possible EDIFACT messages. The second area identified the impact on health authorities, community units, and GPs of primary health care team working and information sharing. As part of this study, we managed a workshop for suppliers to raise awareness of the needs of primary health care teams.
In 1995, shortly after the procurement of NHSnet, 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.