Herefordshire scores UK first by joining up information technology support for

Herefordshire has again achieved a UK first with the integration of Herefordshire Council’s ICT services and the NHS Health Informatics Service, which are now operating as a single team.

This is the first information communications technology service to provide systems and support across a local authority, primary care trust, hospital trust, schools, mental health services, GP practices and some voluntary sector organisations.

The benefit to Herefordshire is the streamlining of information flow and ICT support across most of the public sector in the county, making more efficient use of staff with specialist expertise and skills, and boosting Herefordshire’s purchasing ability with hardware and software suppliers.

The integration of ICT is part of business transformation programmes like Herefordshire Shared Services, which aims to bring corporate services together across the council, primary care trust and hospital trust to save money and reinvest in safeguarding frontline services for vulnerable members of the community. The move also strengthens support for programmes such as the local NHS ICT Programme and Herefordshire Connects, which is a suite of projects aimed at using technology to enable the council and its partners to improve customer care and performance by integrating and modernising services.

Zack Pandor, joint director of ICT for Herefordshire Council and NHS Herefordshire, said: “The level of partnership working and integration within public services in Herefordshire is attracting a lot of attention nationally, both from other local authorities and health trusts. By joining up services in this way, we can achieve real economies of scale and improve the level of service and support we can provide to doctors, schools, social workers, hospitals and voluntary workers. Improving outcomes for local citizens needs joined up services, and the integration of ICT across health and local government will significantly aid this”. 

Joining up ICT services provides many valuable technical benefits, such as providing users with faster and more reliable access to content and knowledge databases, and more opportunities for technical innovation. For example the council and the primary care trust are in the latter stages of joining up their websites, which again would be a first in the UK, and consolidating its data centres to support the green agenda and improve disaster recovery capabilities

The new integrated service provides a full range of ICT services including architecture, programme and project management, IT Operations, Applications Support and Development and Knowledge Management.

The commercial and financial benefits are substantial, including increased economies of scale and improved purchasing power with suppliers. Following a recent benchmarking exercise, the service already compares well with other public sector ICT teams in terms of cost performance.