Radically new interoperability for Public Health England

Background

Public Health England wanted to modernise their screening services technology platforms. Numerous different screening services were being managed using different IT systems, multiplying costs and reducing agility and evolvability of the services. PHE needed to devise a completely new approach that was efficient and future proof.

The Aire Logic Solution

Aire Logic was asked to support PHE in the design of a new enterprise architecture for screening services. We assessed each of the current services utilising our EA Light method to establish the current state architecture. We then began a detailed analysis of the current business processes within the screening services, establishing touch points with other systems and highlighting common processes across all services. These processes were refined into a set of common capabilities that the screening services currently provided.

We have developed an Enterprise Architecture method (EA Light) that describes what a business desires in terms of capabilities. By mapping an organisation's drivers and goals (i.e. its business strategy) to capabilities, (e.g. create patient letters) and in turn, mapping these capabilities to existing IT systems and services, we can quickly determine where there are gaps and improvements to be made. EA Light thus allows us to create an IT strategy that is fully aligned with the business strategy. Furthermore, the use of capabilities as a core concept lets us subdivide the problem, allowing prioritisation of effort and agile delivery. The approach effectively provides a bridge between business needs and technical decision making.

For PHE, the established set of capabilities was reviewed in relation to PHE's drivers and goals. Any new capabilities not yet supported by the service were also considered. By establishing this desired set of capabilities, Aire Logic was able to devise a comprehensive target architecture, which provided flexible support for screening services in the future. Key architectural decisions from the target architecture were surfaced with stakeholders to allow decisions to be made in a collaborative manner, with input from across the organisation. This allowed the team to create a roadmap of architectural changes which would carry the customer through to the strategic architecture.

All of the method, work and decisions were gathered into a comprehensive report and target architecture document for final delivery for the customer.

Next Steps

The proposed strategic roadmap was ratified by PHE boards and a long term plan for roll out was established. Aire Logic is providing light touch support to the customer for delivery of the screening architecture across a number of programmes. The changes have already provided benefits to the services and, in the long term, will provide major cost savings and the ability to support brand new screening services without having to initialise new systems or processes.

Aire Logic Healthcare Architecture

• Establish business drivers, goals and current trust / STP / regional architecture
• Investigate the main capabilities that the enterprise is wishing to achieve
• Deliver a clear strategic architecture roadmap
• Review the current architecture against strategic roadmap and work with industry principles to establish key architectural decisions
• Highlight potential risk areas, and weak points in current or planned architecture to ensure it can meet original business drivers
• Create rapid visibility of stakeholders actual priorities
• Provide techniques to ensure that projects work towards strategic architecture and shared goals

"PHE provided us with the opportunity to apply EA Light to a substantial landscape. While challenging, the team found work immensely rewarding because from the outset we were able to see a clear route to improving screening services technologies. The resulting strategy delivers a streamlined, enhanced technical architecture that will enable PHE to realise efficiencies and ultimately improve patient outcomes"

Joseph Waller
Director, Aire Logic