North London Mental Health Partnership has announced its intention to move to a single electronic patient record system for the partnership.
The move means Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust will use the RIO electronic patient record system, with the partnership noting that it has “made the difficult decision to discontinue the use of EMIS, used by Camden and Islington clinicians,” and adding that they “recognise the value that EMIS has brought to integrated working with primary care”.
From October 2024, there will be three systems to access patient’s clinical data and consultation records, with the partnership stating that a “comprehensive data migration of clinical data and consultation records from EMIS onto RIO will take place in May 2024.” The Health and Social Care Network Spine will be used for emergency and next of kin data, and access to the London Care Record will provide a view of patient data and records such as demographics, alerts, allergies, referrals, appointments (future and past), admission history, and other data.
The partnership notes that “currently there are approximately 64 GP practices that have a data sharing agreement with C&I. Moving forward there will be three systems available to enable access to a patient’s clinical data and consultation records.”
A review in 2021 highlighted that staff “needed to manually enter data into different systems, resulting in duplication of effort” and it “resulted in fragmented records with incomplete data”. Therefore the partnership stated the “need of integrated and collaborative systems across North Central London”.
Earlier in the month for HTN Now, we held a session on digital access e-hubs for online consultations in North West London. We were joined by a group of speakers including Paul Charnley (digital lead and chair of the National Blueprinting Steering Group); Saj Kahrod (assistant director of programmes in blueprinting and knowledge sharing at NHS England); Aaron Hamilton (senior project manager at Healthcare Centre London GP Federation); and Nigel Gausden (SME programme manager and subject matter expert in primary care and urgent care for Seneca Advisory). You can read the key discussion points here.
In other news around electronic patient records, last month we reported that Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has announced Nervecentre as its EPR supplier, as part of efforts to “reduce the number of digital systems in place, moving from many complex, poorly connected systems to an intuitive solution that allows clinicians to efficiently review and enter patient information in real-time at the patient’s bedside”.
Also in February, we shared how Jersey has published a review on the nation’s EPR implementation, highlighting the need for “greater focus on effective stakeholder and user engagement, as well as more effective discipline around the identification, monitoring and delivery of benefits”.
