News & events

Health Archives and Records Group news

HARG Committee

Forthcoming HARG meetings

Future health archives and records events

Health archives and records news

Health Archives and Records Group news

Website

• The Health Archives and Records Group website was formally launched in January 2007. It extends the summary information previously available on the Society of Archives website.

Representation on groups

• Rob Baker represented HARG on the working group for the Department of Health NHS Records Management Code of Practice, which came out in April 2006. This is a revision of 'For the Record' (Health Services Circular 1999/053).
• Karen Waite is the HARG representative on a collaboration with the Records Management Society to propose the development of a classification scheme related to corporate/business records of health organisations, such as administration, human resources, finance (not patient health records). The project has been developing the scheme since January 2007 and now also has representation from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The group meets every two months in London. The group expects to have reached agreement on NHS Trusts’ core functions by July 2007, and to publish version 1 of the scheme (on the Department of Health website and elsewhere as appropriate) in December 2007.
• Samantha Farhall and Victoria Rea have agreed to be the HARG representatives on a "Working Assumptions Group" due to be set up to look into issues including how the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) guidance on records of deceased persons will apply to archivists' working practices on access, including the Freedom of Information Act.

Submissions / responses

• Jenny Haynes (lead for the Research sub-group) submitted a response on behalf of HARG to the Government review conducted by Sir David Cooksey on the arrangements for the public funding of health research in the UK.
• Colin Gale (current Acting Secretary, and previous Co-Chair of HARG) wrote an article about UK Health Archives for the Australian Society of Archivists Bulletin, which is available on this website.

Meetings with external bodies

• Catherine Redfern and Rob Baker met with representatives of The National Archives on 14 September 2006 to update them on HARG activities and discuss issues of mutual interest.

Publications

• Kath Webb and Rob Baker have revised the HARG Hospital Patient Case Records guidance (see resources page), in order to take account of the recently issued NHS Records Management Code of Practice and to update other references.

HARG Committee

• Karen Waite stepped down as Chair at the HARG AGM in May 2008, following her appointment as Head of Corporate Governance at Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust. HARG is currently looking for a new Chair. If you are interested, please contact our Membership Secretary, Colin Gale for further details.
• Stephen Soanes was co-opted onto the Committee at their teleconference in November 2007.
• At the AGM in June 2007, Eleanor Burgess (Healthcare Commission) agreed to take the role of minutes secretary, following Victoria Rea stepping down from this position but still remaining on the committee.

Forthcoming HARG meetings

• Friday 18 June 2010: the meeting will be held in meeting room 6a of Addenbrooke's Treatment Centre, Hills Road Cambridge. Full details to follow. An agenda will be available here in early June.

If  you are interested in joining the Committee, or any of the sub-groups (see About Us page for details), please contact our Membership Secretary, Colin Gale in the first instance.

Future health archives and records events

• If you have any events you would like to go up in this section, please send details to our acting web editor, Victoria Rea.

Health archives and records news

• A national project is being undertaken to create a Business Classification Scheme (BCS) for the NHS across the UK. They did a press release in August 2007 that contains further details.
  
  
• There is a new Information Governance Group called IG4U. It is a free networking group, which will hold three meetings per year. Details are available on the Dilys Jones web site. This group's aim is to support all those working in the area of Information Governance in health and social care, from both the public and private sectors. It will discuss common issues, inform about useful resources, share tolls, work on cases, and learn about what is new and helpful. IG4U was launched on 2 November 2007, chaired by Peter Wilson (Information Governance Manager at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) and sponsored by Dilys Jones Associates Ltd.
  
  
• Guidance on access to information about the deceased. The Office of the UK Information Commissioner has published a technical guidance note about this (including information contained in medical records). If this link doesn’t work, go to http://www.ico.gov.uk/tools_and_resources/document_library/freedom_of_information.aspx, and click on the first pdf under the heading “detailed specialist guides”.
  
  
• NHS Records Advisory Group (RAG) held its 4th meeting in Leeds on 8 March 2007. The Health Archives & Records Group is represented on the RAG by Michael Goodson from Wakefield District PCT. A report on their activities follows:
  

  Records Management Roadmap
  A number of resources have been developed to assist organisations in meeting the requirements of the Records Management Code of Practice. These include:
  *Sample Records Management Policy and Strategy
  *Inventory survey forms/templates
  *Raising the profile of records management
  
  In addition the RAG have developed a range of Information Governance training resources which are intended to supplement organisations' existing training programmes.  The training materials will be available on-line and will be free of charge. This will include the following materials:
  *Records Management Code of Practice - Introduction
  *Health Records Management - Foundation (staff with 6-12 months service)
  *Health Records Management - Practitioner (supervisory level & specific staff)
  *Corporate Records Management - Practitioner (Heads of Dept. e.g. Finance, HR, Estates etc)
  
  Each training session includes a number of questions at the end to confirm that the topic has been understood and an evaluation form.  Work is currently underway to develop the training to record who has accessed it and the results of the tests.  This will particularly useful for organisations and training departments to keep a record of who has completed the training.
  
  Records Management Code of Practice - review
  Part 2 of the code of practice (retention schedule) will be reviewed, updated in line with legislation and re-published later this year (after v5 of the IG Toolkit has been completed).  There is still an opportunity to influence the retention schedule as comments are still being collated by the group. The group are also working on an Information Security Management Code of Practice which will provide a legal framework and include all relevant legislation.

• ISO standard on security of health archives is a new standard that is currently being prepared. It is called 'Health Informatics - Security Requirements for Archiving of Electronic Health Records' (ISO/TC 215/WG 4).

• MoReq 2 is a revision of MoReq, which provides a specification for managing electronic records using an ERMS. MoReq 2 aims to develop a standard specification for ERMS systems on a Europe-wide basis, covering both the public and private sectors, throughout Europe.