"I’m immensely proud of the great strides we made in 2021 and the people who helped us achieve so much. We look forward to 2022 with a renewed sense of purpose and determination to play our part by encouraging the adoption of standards at scale and at pace. "

Last year we achieved landmark successes, for which PRSB is immensely proud. Our membership grew rapidly; we strengthened the voice of social care in our membership and its impact on our work; we launched the hugely successful Standards Partnership Scheme; we had record participation by frontline staff and people who use services in developing more PRSB standards than ever before, including important standards that underpin the UK-wide commitment to deliver more personalised care to people everywhere.

Joining up health and social care

Integrated health and social care is fundamental to people’s health and wellbeing and PRSB is building upon our proud track record of championing integration in all aspects of our work. Our partnership with the Care Software Providers Association, our new board member with expertise in social care and our growing membership (nine organisations with a social care-specific remit have joined the membership in the last year) have strengthened our advocacy for social care and reinforced our credentials and commitment to the sector’s interests. Digital social care suppliers are well represented in our Standards Partnership Scheme, which is evidencing real benefits to social care providers and the end users of care services.

Getting standards used

We have made more progress this year in advancing the cause of standards in practice than ever before and we have done that in a variety of ways. From a standing start in early 2021 we’ve gone from strength to strength with the Standards Partnership Scheme, which now includes a great cross section of suppliers, both large and small, from health and social care and we are enjoying great support from them by working together. Many of our partner organisations have chosen to be assessed for how well they have used standards in their systems, and where appropriate, attain the PRSB Quality Mark, demonstrating that their products comply with PRSB standards. For the first time we can provide objective, independent evidence that supplier systems are conformant with standards and we are already seeing how that is making a difference to care providers and we are proud of that achievement. The scheme has been well supported by system leaders in the NHS and social care and it is increasingly being included in procurement frameworks and guidance, further strengthening its impact in getting standards into widespread use, as well as enhancing PRSB’s position and reputation in the health and care system.

Our expertise in conformance assessment is being used to test a similar process for the NHS Dynamic Purchasing System for Adult Social Care with their suppliers to help drive implementation further and faster. We are delighted that PRSB is able to bring our skills and learning from the Standards Partnership Scheme to this project and look forward to progressing this exciting initiative.

Ensuring PRSB’s sustainability

We have established a four-year, long-term contractual relationship with NHS England so that our position in the system is secure, we are recognised as an established part of the standards infrastructure, and our unique credentials as the partner for information record standards is confirmed. At the same time, we are actively developing new income streams to further increase our independence, which we prize, and create capacity to work on the things we and our members believe are most important. Our income has grown significantly in 2021 and that has enabled us to invest in our resources and projects to support standards development and implementation and enable greater uptake of standards and interoperability.

Growing the organisation

As our membership and range of projects has grown, PRSB has focussed on developing the organisation to grow and nurture its talents in order to support its expanded horizons. We have added to PRSB’s staff and pool of experts that we can draw upon on a project basis. We have new executive team members who bring key leadership to our work programme and Standards Partnership Scheme, as well as a new Head of Marketing and Communications, who is leading on marketing our services. Oliver Lake, Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer joined PRSB in late 2021, as did Rebecca Hughes, Director of Partner Solutions, and Andy Hall, Head of Marketing and Communications. We expanded our analytics workforce, which has been critical to taking on new and more diverse standards projects, such as our work on NHS staff passports and speeding up the adoption of shared care records. We have recruited an impressive team of clinical assessors, led by Dr Annette Gilmore, who assess suppliers for conformance to our standards as part of the Standards Partnership Scheme conformance assessment process.

I’m immensely proud of the great strides we made in 2021 and the people who helped us achieve so much. I want to thank the staff of PRSB for their dedication and sheer hard work over the last year and our members, partners and the wider health and care community for their unflagging support for PRSB. We look forward to 2022 with a renewed sense of purpose and determination to play our part by encouraging the adoption of standards at scale and at pace. We will do this by growing participation in the Standards Partnership Scheme and raising awareness and understanding of the Quality Mark and what it means. We will launch our scheme to NHS and social care organisations and support them on the journey to standards adoption and successful digital transformation. We are adding value at every stage, improving our standards and making them useful, usable and used. We will continue to demonstrate our responsiveness to our customers in a variety of ways such as providing our standards in an increasing range of formats (JSON, HTML, Excel, MindMaps), streamlining our standards to make them easier to use to support adoption.

Above all, we are passionate about playing our part in making person-centred care a reality, not just a promise. We will expand our campaign to enable people to create an ‘About Me’ profile, supported by enlightened professionals and suppliers, so that people’s wishes and preferences can be accessed digitally to anyone who provides care to them. Exciting challenges await us in 2022 and we are keen to seize the moment and deliver crucial improvements in the way health and care are delivered in the future.