NHS England awards £1.6m deal to build digital staff 'passports' in fight against coronavirus second wave

NHS England has left it until late September amid record UK coronavirus infections to award a software development contract said to be crucial to the health service's response to the second wave of the pandemic. With daily cases rising to 7,143 yesterday - leapfrogging the previous UK record by 269 people, reported days ago - …

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Under established NHS rules, nurses, doctors and other staff have to repeat employment checks and to attend inductions despite remaining within the NHS

Sounds like bureaucracy they could do with bypassing anyway!

(cancel passport if leaving 'under a cloud')

[Zog_but_not_the_first]

NHS England has left it until late September...

They really should be back in school.

[macjules]

Re: NHS England has left it until late September...

Perhaps they will use the £1.6m to make a living playing pool.

[Pascal Monett]

"In view of the extreme urgency"

The NHS might have done good to pay attention to the issue in March of this year.

Because the problem was pretty much obvious back then.

[John 110]

Re: "In view of the extreme urgency"

Maybe they had other things on their mind....

[Version 1.0]

Re: "In view of the extreme urgency"

The Tories have been busy cutting NHS spending for years while boosting their own spending on Tory contractors. The NHS have done a damn good job given the resources that had managed to keep the Tories from stealing.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: "In view of the extreme urgency"

NHS spending has gone up in real terms by about 3% per year since the 1950s. It's now 7% of GDP, it was only 3% of GDP in the 1950s. It's only gone down in real terms for 5 of the last 60 years, one was under the Major government and one under the 2009-2011 coalition, other than those no Tory (or Labour) government has reduced it since 1952.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "In view of the extreme urgency"

Nevertheless it remains one of Labour's favourite bogeymen to be trotted out at every opportunity.

[Anonymous Coward]

increased in real terms

it's complicated.

In absolute terms it has gone up

real terms assumes thatmedical costs rise at the same rate as rpi/cpi - they don't

Medical inflation runs around 10%. Complexity of what can be done and the associated costs go up. You don't see lots more hospitals and increasing staff - we are shortages all over the place.

Demand is growing faster than ability to deliver so in real medical terms we are being progressively starved - and don't forget we are meant to be making at least 3% year on year cost savings - doing more with less.

[AndrewD375]

The envy of the world, it is.

[Alister]

It used to be, until successive governments (of all political leanings) chronically underfunded it, and sold off or dismantled parts of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Confused. Surely this already exists

https://digital.nhs.uk/services/nhs-identity

[Dante Alighieri]

Enlightenment

NHS Identity is basically a remote access token to a live clinical system.

NHS Passports which have been discussed in my region for the last year (so they are not new or related to COVID!) are meant to bundle your Occ Health data, Mandatory Training, DBS and professional registration checks in some form of bundle that the relevant HR can determine that these are in place (but not necessarily share the actual data) - one Trust guaranteeing that the staff member is correctly checked and safe to allow on your premises (an NHS equivalent of the schemes we have for contractors on-site)

Hope this helps

[Dante Alighieri]

Re: Enlightenment

too late to edit

effectively a "supplier credentialing system" (proper IT name which escaped me above)

Shame there is no prior art.... </sarc>

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackpool, that well-known software security hotbed

What could possibly go wrong ???

[monty75]

Re: Blackpool, that well-known software security hotbed

At least it's not Crapita

[batfink]

Re: Blackpool, that well-known software security hotbed

Not yet, anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Blackpool, that well-known software security hotbed

Hey thats my patch!

you leave one spreadsheet visible through te website and you never hear the end of it .....

[Adelio]

Mobile Phones

It looks like this requires the staff to download software on their private phones for a work reason.

I have the same issue at work, they want us to use lastpass but the ONLY way requires that i download an app to my Private phone (I have no work phone)

If they want to provide me with a works phone then i will use that to download the app but why should I use my PRIVATE phone for work?

After all, I do not always remember to carry my phone around with me!

Anyway not everyone has a mobile phone and even if they do does not mean they are running a compatable OS (Android/IOS) seems to be the only options, but windows mobile etc.

[Dave Pickles]

Re: Mobile Phones

But if you're redeploying to another NHS Trust, you'll presumably have to hand in your 'work' phone...

[Dante Alighieri]

Re: Mobile Phones

No - that is NHS identity

This is a permission to work system (see my response above) : are all necessary checks in place and trusting another organisation to do this for you.

There are plenty of ways to establish your bona-fides, not least of which is simply logging in to your NHS email!

[Version 1.0]

Anti Virus software

You think that Johnson is thinking that he can prevent the epidemic by installing anti-virus software?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this is for the 2nd wave. But what about the 3rd and 4th waves. I'm really concerned about wave 37 personally...

[Anonymous Coward]

Friends of Dominic Cummings

only need bother applying.