Dr Annette Gilmore

I am the Sickle Cell Research Nurse and Haemoglobinopathy Registry Manager at Central Middlesex Hospital. I have been involved in IT developments in healthcare for over ten years and for my PhD thesis I developed and evaluated the viability and benefit of a patient registry for the dual purposes of patient management and research.  One of my current roles is project manager for the development of a Record Access system for patients to access their hospital records on line.

I trained as a general nurse and midwife and worked in different clinical roles before entering research.  I started my research career in the Nursing Research Unit at Kings College London and then moved to the NMC.  I returned to the NHS to be involved in research and development in clinical practice. I am a member of the RCN for a very long time and used to be a RCN steward.

I joined the eHealth forum steering committee in September 2012 because I want to share my expertise and knowledge to help nurses in clinical practice have the competence and confidence to be more proactive in ensuring IT systems work for them. A major bug bear of mine is the amount of duplication of paperwork and the unfriendliness of IT systems for conducting basic administrative tasks. Why do patients have to recall their complete medical history every time they are admitted to hospital or attend a new clinic? Why can’t health professionals routinely get basic statistics from their IT systems?  For example data to conduct audits, risk assessments, annual reports, research and so forth.  ‘Information is Power’ according to the Department of Health but only if that information is pertinent, timely, complete and easily accessible to those who need it.