B5:    Improving information management for clinical governance in primary care: lessons from implementing the UK Coronary Heart Disease National Service Framework

Nicola (Nikki) Ellis PhD is the Clinical Governance Research Fellow, Oldham Primary Care Trust (nee Oldham East Primary Care Group) and a Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle. She is currently part way through a three-year appointment as a NHS Executive NW Research &andDevelopment Post-doctoral Training Fellow. Her current work is concerned with (a) researching the ways that organisational and professional structures within the NHS shape the use of information technologies and the development of specific systems, and (b) development work around the effective use of Informatics to support clinical governance. Consequently, she is seconded part-time to Oldham Primary Care Trust (nee Oldham East Primary Care Group). Prior to this Fellowship, Nikki co-ordinated and undertook a multi-disciplinary evaluation of telemedicine projects being undertaken in the North West region of the NHS in England. In 1999 Nikki undertook a short sabbatical with the General Practice Computing Group and the Department of General Practice, University of Sydney, Australia.

Sheila Teasdale MMedSci is currently working as the Service Director of the NHS Information Authority-funded PRIMIS (Primary Care Information Services) initiative, based in the Division of General Practice, University of Nottingham, having spent the last 3 years piloting training methods and data extraction software in preparation. She is also Editor of Informatics (the Journal of Informatics in Primary Care) and an Editorial Adviser to the BMJ. She is the leader of the JIGSAW Team, which created the informatics curriculum for primary care that has been extensively used in the incorporation of informatics into the medical and nursing curricula. In previous lives she has worked in local government, publishing, adult education, practice management and clinical audit.

Cheryl Cowley BSc SRN SCM RN DN is the Programme Lead of HIP for CHD, a health informatics programme to support the information requirements of the National Service Framework for CHD, funded by the NHS Executive. Cheryl’s background is in nursing and is still a one-day-a-week nurse practitioner in Nottingham having been in primary care for 13 years. She most recently has been a partner in two European Health Informatics Projects - DiabCare Quality Network and Prestige :Guidelines in Health Care - that used knowledge based and decision support technologies. Her interests include decision support during the consultation, organisational learning and the implementation of evidence-based guidelines. She is a committee member of the Primary Health Care Specialist Group of the British Computer Society. Another interest is in supporting nurses in primary care with guidelines and evaluation at the point of care.