US-UK sign healthcare IT MoU

NHS England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre will sign a healthcare IT memorandum of understanding with the US Department for Health and Social Services today. The MoU focuses on sharing common values around healthcare informatics and making it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to get a foot in the door on both sides of the Atlantic.

At the Information Services Commissioning Group board meeting earlier this week, Tim Kelsey, NHS England’s director of patients and information, said the agreement would be signed today “to try and make access to both markets easier for SMEs.” He added that he expected some substantive bilateral announcements to be made in June and said: “We hope we can announce some really exciting things for SMEs and patients in general."

The MoU says that potential future sharing activities include sharing quality indicators, and “identify alignments across existing UK and US repositories and topics with the potential for further collaboration and harmonisation, particularly in the area of longitudinal patient indicators.”