ABSTRACT
As Sir John Pattison remarked in his interview with the author in 2003 (for full interview see Appendix 2):
The least 'exciting', but nonetheless fundamental to the success of all elements, is the work needed to put the infrastructure in place. The health service and the people who work in it and have cause to use it, should not have to 'make do' with inferior technology that other elements of society readily take for granted.
We want to avoid giving those people less IT capability than their children receive at primary school, with high-speed networks now being made available to all schools and colleges. That means we should not have to accept a network that is slow and incapable of supporting the kind of fast data flows that clinicians will need. The infrastructure elements are essential building blocks to achieve the ultimate objective.
Data and IT standards are essential if we are to allow flexibility in the delivery of clinical solutions. Interoperability between different components can only be achieved if dogmatic national technical standards are developed and complied with. The accreditation process will enable the implementation of these nationally agreed standards.
The next few chapters outline some of the key infrastructure elements on which the national programme for IT will be built.