§ Mr. MorganTo ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 2 May, Official Report, column 608, what estimate he has made of the number of (a) hospitals and (b) general practice doctors who have participated in the development of the Read codes system; what financial value he has placed on their time in evaluating the costs and benefits of continuing public investment in the Read codes system; and if he will make a statement. [28934]
§ Mr. HoramThe clinical terms projects involved approximately 2,000 clinicians including 72 general practitioners. Individual hospitals were not represented.
The clinicians were associated with 55 working groups. The chairman of each group received a small honorarium and members were re-imbursed travel expenses for attendance at meetings.
No estimate was made of the financial value of the time that each clinician spent on the project.
With regard to an evaluation of the Read codes I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave him on 2 May at column 608.
§ Mr. MorganTo ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 2 May, Official Report, column 608, what was the total licence income accruing for all NHS sources to Computer Aided Medicine Systems Ltd. in each financial year since 1991–92; and on what occasion the appropriate risk-rewards ratio pertaining to this licence income was last independently evaluated. [28938]
§ Mr. HoramThe following are the revenues for national health service licences paid to Computer Aided Medical Systems Ltd. in each financial year since 1991:
£ April 1991 to 30 September 1992 (18 months) 1,530,900 1 October 1992 to 30 September 1993 1,286,912 1 October 1993 to 30 September 1994 1,572,877 1 October 1994 to 30 September 1995 1,684,016 All the company's accounts and business practices have been audited and accepted for each year up to 30 September 1994.
The annual audit for 1994–95 accounts began on 20 April 1996, and the report is awaited from the auditors with completion scheduled for the end of May 1996.
§ Mr. MorganTo ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 2 May, Official Report, column 607, if he will list those elements of the Read codes 3 system which will reach service strength in (a) 1996, (b) 1997, (c) 1998, (d) 1999 and (e) 2000. [28937]
§ Mr. HoramThe time scale for key elements of Read codes version 3 to reach service level strength is as follows:
286W1996
A product to support the business requirements of hospitals including disorders, procedures, signs and symptoms which describes the work of hospital doctors and is to be used by doctors and coders within hospitals to enable the production of discharge summaries, statutory data sets and reports.
1997
A product including additional terms and qualifiers to support the needs of general practioners and doctors in acute trusts for more detailed electronic clinical records.
Work will take place in 1997 to pilot exchange of clinical messages between and within the various healthcare sectors.
1998 onwards
The nature of the further refinement and development of version 3 will depend on the feedback from users.