On the day the Dorset Care Record hit its 500th user, HTN spoke with Tony McDougal from Dorset Council about the progress of the Dorset Care Record, what has gone well and what is next in the project.
What is the Dorset Care Record?
The Dorset Care Record is a county wide record that is joining up different health and social care systems to create a comprehensive and up-to-date record for residents of Dorset to help improve the care they receive.
The Record includes the latest radiology, pathology, referral and encounter information. It includes demographic data and information from the GP system.
There are currently 500 users accessing the record regularly and we are really pleased that we have 83/85 GP practices connected.
What challenges have there been?
One of the main challenges has been the integration of data from different systems.
There’s many different organisations and systems involved and it is important to ensure the information is described in a consistent format. It’s obviously really important to ensure robust testing of the information before going live and this has been one of our main challenges.
What has been a key success factor in delivering the project?
Engagement and communication has been really key. The project comes after two national initiatives that didn’t work out so it was key to engage with partners and stakeholders.
We ran many events and did a large scale direct mail campaign. This meant we were very active with the public, after all it’s their portal. We had a strong communication plan in place to really support awareness of the Record and we believe this really helped.
What is next for the Dorset Care Record?
In Autumn there will be additional information added to the record to include allergies, discharge information, medicines, pathology and further demographic information.
Partners will also be introducing single sign-on the functionality to take you from each partner system into the Dorset Care Record, we believe this will help increase the number of users of the Record.
In the near future we will be developing our citizen portal with partners. We are first piloting the technology with maternity information and cancer follow up information. There’s typically a high level of correspondence so it will be greatly beneficial to digitise this information and really make a difference to these patients.
Also moving forward we will be working with our neighbouring regions to create a regional portal to support patients wider through the Local Health and Care Record (LHCR) (Wessex Care Record). Once this is in place it will allow us to look at population health, DNA issues and more.
Watch a video here on the Dorset Care Record:
