We spoke with Mike Maguire, chief officer at NHS West Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG):
“NHS West Lancashire CCG is one of a number of CCGs in Lancashire that contributed to the delivery of a Lancashire wide Digital Roadmap aligned to the Lancashire Sustainability and Transformation Plan. The Digital Roadmap builds on an established programme to:
- Improve the digital maturity of healthcare providers to enable them to be paper-free at the point of care by 2020
- Share electronic records across organisations to support safe, effective and efficient care
- Empower the patient to be an active participant in their care by giving them access to their health records
- Enable citizens to harness the power of assistive technology to live independent, healthy lives
- Make better use of our data to predict need and inform future service delivery
- Create a robust, affordable IT infrastructure that supports integrated working and new models of care across the public sector workforce
- Create opportunities for economic growth within the region in the digital life sciences sector
Our CCG in particular has been working on a number of digital health projects including:
- FLO Simple Telehealth which is being deployed initially into the Heart Failure Service
- Rally round, which connects carers and patients which is now available to the West Lancashire population
- MSK Portal and App to support patients to self-manage their conditions a development currently underway.
- An App which if deployed will offer rewards to West Lancashire Patients in return for being active and improving their Health and Wellbeing
In addition to the above we have also:
- Connected our GPs to a Common Lancashire Network
- Modernised their Telephony
- Created a Primary/Community EPR
- Implemented Electronic Ordering of Tests and Results reporting.
- Created the foundations now for delivering an ‘Integrated Shared Care Record’ using the Lancashire Patient Record Exchange Service.
- Modernised our internal CCG systems including the introduction of Office 365 and Project and Programme Management systems.
Having re-tendered our Community and Urgent Care contracts (process is currently ongoing) we are looking forward to a continued programme of Digital Health Innovations as new technology enabled models of care are introduced.