ABSTRACT
The NHS Plan sets out a completely new way of delivering healthcare. At a local level success is totally dependent on change management. In this chapter, authors describe some of the characteristics of change. This includes a review of clinical projects resulting in successful change. It also gives example of strategies and models that can be used in the implementation and subsequent evolution of Unified Patient Record (UPR). Unless existing healthcare professionals understand the importance of the information they routinely collect, they will not recognise the deficiencies in present systems. This means that they will not see, for example: the benefits of changing practices to enable clinical information to be collected as part of everyday record keeping via an electronic patient record; and the usefulness of their information to them when easily accessed in aggregated form for clinical governance, research and patient case load management.
