Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has become the latest healthcare organisation to implement the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR), as a way to help improve the accessibility of patient information across its services.
The programme now involves 13 local NHS organisations and local authorities, providing a view of a patient’s history. Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS FT is now also adding “inpatient discharge summaries, outpatient clinic letters and emergency department discharge summaries” to the shared care record.
Utilising the Interweave shared care record, which is owned and managed by users across six ICSs, the YHCR connects patient records from a range of services including hospitals, GPs, mental health services and social care providers, giving clinicians and other healthcare professionals access to the “most up-to-date” and accurate information on patient health data.
Mike Whiteside, chief clinical information officer at DBTH, commented on the introduction of this new system, saying: “For colleagues, this means easier access to key patient details, fewer delays in retrieving information and better coordination between teams. With a complete view of a patient’s history, we can reduce duplication, streamline discharge planning and provide safer, more personalised care.”
Shared care records: the wider trend
Interweave was recently the winner of the HTN Now Shared Care Record award for their YHCR solution. The platform and IP of the technology, are owned in a unique and sustainable partnership model supported by the principles of open standards and vendor neutrality. They noted the main driver for the development of the solution was the lack of interoperability and standards within legacy systems.
In January, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough ICS announced that its shared care record now shares five types of key mental health documents, to help provide instant access to more detailed mental health information. The five documents being shared are: care plans; crisis plans; diagnosis extracts; risk assessment; mental health act notices.
For a recent HTN Now webinar, we spoke to Lee Rickles, CIO and director of Interweave and Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust to discuss the practicalities of AI technologies, including implementation, data, bias, adoption, policies and best practices. Lee shared some key insights into some of the challenges around data and information sharing when developing Shared Care Records, while emphasising how they are “always looking for opportunities to improve quality and efficiency across the board”.
Health Innovation Manchester recently announced that over 60 Well Pharmacy sites plan to have access to the region’s shared care record, allowing pharmacies across the region access to health and social care data, including “medication history, blood pressure records, lifestyle notes, and immunisation details to support flu and COVID-19 immunisation services”.
