The chairman of the island’s health service says he wants to streamline information and make better use of data.

Andrew Foster began his new role as chairman of Manx Care early last month ahead of the service’s roll out in April.

Speaking to the Manx Independent, Mr Foster, who has many years experience in the UK health and care setting in both nonexecutive and executive roles, including a number of chief Executive roles in NHS foundation trusts, said he has main priorities for the service in its first 12 months.

Firstly, he wants Manx Care to focus on collecting and comparing information.

Mr Foster said: ’There is lots of information inside the Isle of Man’s healthcare system but it’s not collected in one place and it’s not compared with elsewhere.

’For example, if I want to know how good the stroke service is, then what I don’t know at the moment is what the survival rate is, what the length of stay in hospital is, what the clinical outcomes are for people six months after they had their stroke.

’So I want to start collecting all that information so we can compare it with other healthcare systems elsewhere in the world so that we have a bench march so we know the areas where improvement is most needed.’

His second focus will be on improving communication between the various computer systems that operate across the island’s healthcare system.

’What we really want to do is have a single integrated patient information system, so that a healthcare professional at the touch of a button can see all the information they need to know about a patient,’ Mr Foster said.

’Eventually, the patient will be able to access that information themselves. So essentially we would be digitising healthcare and access to healthcare.’

Finally, Mr Foster said he wants to improve relations with staff and provide certainty for employees of Manx Care. He said he wants staff to be ’excited’ about Manx Care and the opportunities it presents for the island and for employees.

Mr Foster believes that by improving the employee experience in the long term, this will make the island’s healthcare system more attractive to professionals such as GPs, nurses and consultants who are in short supply across the British Isles.

In the short term, Manx Care will focus on extending the roles of other professionals to incorporate other areas, for example a practice nurse could take on other roles to alleviate the pressures on GPs. This would also lead to more training and education being available in the island for medical professionals.

However, all of us will have an increased role to play in our own treatment, with Mr Foster saying there is a place for educating people about how to treat themselves in their own home for some long term manageable conditions.

Looking at the situation of private medicine in the island, the private ward at Noble’s Hospital has not reopened since it closed for refurbishment last year.

Mr Foster said: ’There will always be a role for private healthcare and it is better if it can be collocated with the NHS system.

’It is better for patients because they’re adjacent to the services they may need and it’s better for staff who are quite often the same people working the private sector and the public sector.’

l We will have the second half of our interview with Mr Foster in next Tuesday’s Examiner which will include topics such as cancer treatment, management bureaucracy and public scrutiny of Manx Care.