New lead for ‘priority’ digital programme as deadline missed

Simon Eccles, deputy chief executive and chief clinical information officer at NHSX, has replaced Geraint Lewis, chief data officer at NHS England, as the senior responsible officer for the ongoing digital transformation of screening.

NHSX told HSJ this week it had brought in Dr Eccles as the new SRO of the digital transformation of screening “to reflect it as a priority of the digital programme”.

The digital transformation programme was born out of two high-profile failures in the screening programmes in 2018. These incidents in the breast and cervical screening programmes spurred a National Audit Office investigation and a major independent review of cancer screening by Sir Mike Richards.

The transformation plan includes taking cervical screening systems off the National Health Application and Infrastructure Services software system. This was meant to happen at some point in 2020, according to evidence given by Sir Simon Stevens, NHS England chief executive, to the Public Accounts Committee in early 2019.

NHS Digital said in January that cervical screening’s call and recall function would be taken off NHAIS and a new system installed at some point in 2021, though “precise timings will be confirmed when the current pressures on the NHS due to covid-19 have subsided”.

Work began on this interim measure in late 2019, according to meeting papers from the screening transformation steering committee seen by HSJ. They show the new call/recall function would be a stop-gap measure while the NHS develops a “strategic screening platform”.

It will underpin the national screening programmes, which are currently for cervical, breast and bowel cancers, and abdominal aortic aneurisms.

There had previously been an ambition to replace the NHAIS component of screening systems in 2017, reliance on which was seen as “the key weakness… in not just the cervical screening service but a number of others,” Sir Simon told the PAC in March 2019.

This work was delayed past 2017 so that it could be brought in-house by NHS Digital rather than be managed by the outsourced provider, Capita, because the NHS “didn’t have confidence… in Capita’s ability to manage that transition safely”.

An NHSX spokesman told HSJ: “The modernisation of screening and, in particular, the digital transformation of these services, will ensure a more personalised service for the public and ultimately improve patient care and clinical delivery. To reflect it as a priority of the digital programme, it will be led by NHSX’s deputy chief executive and chief clinical information officer, Dr Simon Eccles.”