UK's NHS selects Health Language for IT healthcare solution

Apr 20 2004

Health Language, Inc., (HLI) the world's leading supplier of medical vocabulary and concept-based technology, announced an agreement with the National Health Service (NHS) of the United Kingdom, to provide HLI's language engine technology, LE(TM) for the delivery of enterprise-wide clinical terminology services throughout the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), the largest and most ambitious healthcare IT project in the world. The agreement runs through 2013.

The NHS has contracted five Local Service Providers (LSPs), covering the London, North East, North West & West Midlands, Southern, and Eastern areas, to deliver services at a local level. Once service is provided at the local level, information is collected through use of a national data spine and then stored in a national data repository, which will be managed by the National Application Service Provider (NASP). HLI's LE technology will be used throughout the NASP and LSPs to facilitate and enrich information being stored in the national repository.

"The use of standardised nomenclatures as the foundation for information is mandatory. We have selected Health Language to provide terminology services. Their technology takes information and turns it into knowledge; this will improve patient care and safety," said Richard Granger, Director General of IT for the NHS.

The NHS constantly strives to minimise errors and improve the quality of services provided to the more than 2 million patients it serves every week. HLI's LE technology supports this goal by helping to improve the communications between healthcare professionals by adapting it into a common vocabulary. The result is a healthcare system in which care providers' expertise can be leveraged more easily and utilised to expand the reach to all patients through accelerated diagnoses and progressive treatment plans.

"Healthcare communities around the world stand to benefit immensely from the steps being initiated by the UK in this endeavour. Other countries will undoubtedly seek to model the successes of this programme to improve their own healthcare standards. Ultimately, the opportunity exists to create global programmes with new models for patient care and disease control. We are very pleased to be a contributor towards the success of this unprecedented initiative," stated George Schwend, President and CEO of HLI.

Marc Horowitz, Senior Vice President of HLI, stated that "In working closely with the NHS, it was clear that there was a need to avoid the Tower of Babel syndrome so often seen in healthcare systems. The English NHS had the clear objective to insure they could capture clinical information at a granular level. The requirement to migrate from legacy applications to a more comprehensive set of standards without burdening the user community is key to the success of the NPfIT."

The clinical foundation that LE provides access to is SNOMED Clinical Terms(R), the most comprehensive clinical terminology in existence today, which has been developed and refined by the NHS and the College of American Pathologists over the past 35 years. LE supports the inclusion of a wide-range of vocabularies from many different sources, allowing innovative cross maps to link related information, whilst making them accessible in a consistent way, easing integration and use.

In a statement from Dr. Martin Severs, Clinical Head of the NPfIT and Director of the Information Standards Board for Health in the United Kingdom. Dr. Severs states, "The importance of standard nomenclature is vital to this project. LE technology allows clinicians to use verbiage they are familiar with, while providing a method to transparently standardise information against a consistent knowledge base to drive decision-support and outcomes-based analyses. The result is better care for all patients served by the NHS."

Commenting on the potential benefits of utilising LE, Mike McKenna, EPR Project Manager at Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust said, "We view this as an exciting opportunity to provide a "real-time" online terming facility to clinicians as part of the care process. The successful clinical implementation of SNOMED CT, which iSOFT has embedded through the use of LE in its i.Clinical Manager and LORENZO products has the potential to enormously enhance patient management both during direct patient care and via the subsequent evaluation of treatment outcomes."

The NHS is poised to realise the vision of improving patient choice along with quality and convenience of care. Health Language shares this goal and strives to ensure those that give and receive care have the right information, at the right time. LE technology will connect NHS users so that they communicate more rapidly and more accurately, resulting in better use of technology that will enhance the patient experience and improved patient safety.