17 projects have been supported over the past year through a funding programme, known as Digital PODAC, within the ambulance and community health service sectors.
NHS England provided funding of £6 million (£5m capital and £1m revenue) in 2021 to 2022 to support the projects.
The programme had an aim to support the introduction and use of electronic patient record (EPR) systems, increase remote access to EPRs, increase patient access to appointments and booking systems, and more. For the ambulance services, the projects included to build on existing integrated data architecture, work with integrated care systems, integrate future capabilities and solutions, and support point of care diagnostics.
All organisations taking part will produce a blueprint which will be featured on the FutureNHS blueprinting library, to highlight the benefits, challenges and solutions on each project.
The projects included:
North West
The PRISM programme collects patient information from shared care records across the region, which will be presented to clinicians from the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust (NWAS) by a single outlook.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
The main aim of this project was to integrate the North Manchester Community Services onto the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust EMIS community EPR.
London Ambulance Service NHS Trust
London Ambulance Service NHS Trust is working with St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on a transfer of care pilot.
The project focuses on ambulance data as part of a handover to the emergency department as part of the transfer of care process.
East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust
The East Midland Ambulance Service NHS Trust is implementing a shared care record to improve clinician access to patient information.
Derbyshire Community Health Services Foundation Trust
Two projects are currently being undertaken by Derbyshire Community Health Services Foundation Trust. Firstly, community nursing and therapy services are benefitting from the optimisation of electronic work planning.
The second project has seen a clinically-led remake in utilising documentation and electronic patient records. It aims to be more personalised while improving the accuracy.
East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust
East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust is hoping to allow access to National Records Locator (NRL) by integrating with two commercial partners – Telefonica and Mastek.
Allied Health Professionals Suffolk CIC
This project aims to integrate the self-referral portal with the Microsoft Azure Translations engine, to allow patients to refer themselves in any language. It will also be able to process and store data from the portal and electronic patient records.
Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust
As Cambridge Community Services NHS Trust is East of England’s main provider of Integrated Contraception and Sexual Health services, their project included merging six clinical systems into one across the entire service.
Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust
Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust is distributing information on all patient encounters with 999, 111 and other regional health and social care services to help advise patient care. They aim to improve business intelligence systems’ resilience. With the new architecture, it will see three servers across two sites alongside data replication.
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust will administer augmented reality to allow frontline community nursing colleagues to release time from administrating tasks.
York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Yorkshire and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is implementing the HealthyIO wound care management application to examine the impact of clinical photographs for wounds and pressure ulcers.
West Midlands Ambulance Service University NHS Foundation Trust
West Midlands Ambulance Service is focusing on four areas of digital maturity – decision support, transfer of care, asset and resource optimisation, and records, assessments and plans.
Isle of Wight NHS Trust
Isle of Wight NHS Trust has purchased new vehicle defibrillators to expand clinical data sharing to new electronic patient record solutions. It is aiming to save time by automating collections of vital signs into the EPR.
Provide CIC
This project entails the implementation of three new solutions – DragonOne, AutoPlanner and Brigid implementation. They have helped with training, scheduling patient visits and viewing and updating records from mobile phones.
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust has implemented a Parent Information Portal. It is an interactive and secure platform that is linked to children’s records. The aim is for access to quality health information and messages for every step of their child’s development.
