NHS Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB has awarded a contract to digital solutions platform, IEG4 Limited, for a digitalised end-to-end patient management system, with a contract lifecycle value of £497,600 over 3 years.
The ICB has procured the solution to support referrals, assessment, approvals, contracting, payment and case management of NHS funded care packages within the ICB. They expressed a need for information to “seamlessly flow between processes by connecting the entire lifecycle into one platform”, highlighting integration between systems across health and social care as a “critical” element for the new system.
A planned service-wide transformation will be implemented across all business and clinical areas, the ICB notes, as well as clinical pathways such as acquired brain injury, mental health and specialist placements.
The ICB noted that “Interoperability is of paramount importance, allowing for the ICB and wider health and social care teams to share and view records”. When discussing the system, they added “this will support improved accessibility and visibility of data which in turn will enable more efficient and streamlined workflows for all teams and a better person experience”.
Investing in digital transformation: the wider trend
In December, the Department of Health and Social Care announced £126 million in funding to help support hospices in making improvements to IT systems and facilities, in what was termed as the “biggest investment into hospices in a generation”. This came as part of the government’s Plan for Change and also factors into the 10 Year Health Plan’s aims to shift healthcare from hospitals and into the community.
UK health tech startup, Kidney Beam, recently received a £610k investment to help with improving virtual kidney care through their app. They plan to expand their reach into more unrepresented communities to “enhance the usability of its platform and forge new partnerships”.
Finally, Digital Health and Care Wales are seeking the procurement of a ‘National Intelligent Integrated Audit Solution’, with a budget of up to £5 million. The aim of the audit solution is to “monitor user access to the NHS Wales single patient record” and to be utilised for auditing relevant national clinical applications and national repositories, including all seven health boards and five of the six other statutory trusts across Wales.
