HIMSS will collaborate with BCS, the British information technology trade group, on a project to introduce HIMSS Analytics Electronic Medical Records Adoption Model (EMRAM), which gauges hospitals' health IT adoption, to the United Kingdom.

"We’re delighted to be working with HIMSS Analytics Europe on this project," said Matthew Swindells, chair of BCS Health. "We believe information and technology are crucial to the challenge of transforming our healthcare service. The HIMSS Analytics EMRAM model will enable hospitals to measure their progress in the implementation of health IT and benchmark themselves against the rest of the NHS and internationally."

Swindells added that this is particularly important as the NHS "moves from the top down direction of NHS Connecting for Health to local decision making. As the Chartered Institute for IT, we believe that through the expertise of our members and partnerships such as this one, we can help support and enable the NHS to deal with the challenges and changes that it is experiencing as it embraces information technology."

[See also: Lessons from the UK.]

BCS will work with HIMSS Analytics Europe and other organizations to test the EMRAM model for suitability in the UK and assist with any modifications that are required, officials say. A number of hospitals, covering the acute and mental health sectors are being recruited to assist in these efforts.

Meanwhile, BCS Health and HIMSS Analytics Europe are establishing a steering committee to ensure the smooth running of the project. It consists of key health informatics and healthcare professionals including: Luke Readman, CIO at Wirral University Teaching Hospital, Peter Dyke from the Department of Health, Jon Lindberg from Intellect, Professor Iain Carpenter from the Royal College of Physicians and Kathy Mason.

[See also: Climbing the ladder: Step by step, inpatient EMRs are finding their level.]

"I am pleased to support BCS and HIMSS Analytics in their efforts to bring EMRAM into the UK," said Readman. "As the CIO for a hospital that has made great efforts to digitize healthcare over many years, I look forward to the opportunity to measure our progress against an external benchmark and am confident that this will inspire us to try even harder to be one of the best in Europe.

HIMSS Analytics collects data from hospitals and healthcare delivery organizations in 25 countries worldwide. EMRAM is an eight-stage model (Stages 0 to 7) that classifies an institution’s level of IT adoption. Thus far, 68 Stage 7 hospitals have been identified globally. A Stage 7 is a fully digitized, virtually paperless environment with a broad range of interoperability and data exchange capabilities with other organizations.

[See also: HIMSS Analytics gets mainstream play.]

"The EMR Adoption Model and its underlying database provide healthcare organisations, governments, and other decision-makers, with critical information about the adoption and use of information technology," said H. Stephen Lieber, president and CEO of HIMSS. "Globally, we find a significant correlation between stages of IT adoption and improvement in patient care metrics; through this project we will bring new knowledge to the table in support of continuous patient care improvement in the UK."