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London’s private ‘casualty’ centre, launched this month by Casualty Plus, incorporates a fully integrated electronic clinical and administration system supplied by Australian health IT supplier, TrakHealth.
The MedTrak system installed at the centre in Brentford is a fully integrated, based on HL7 standards and provides a complete electronic record of a patient’s progress from initial registration, through diagnosis and treatment through to discharge.
Dr Johan Du Plessis, medical director, told E-Health Insider that the MedTrak system had been chosen because it provided one integrated system that met all the needs of Casualty Plus including complex requirements such as a picture archiving and communication system (PACS), laboratory tests and results and day surgery records. “We needed a tried and tested EPR system, and we know that the MedTrak system meets all those needs.”
The MedTrak EPR system is held on a single central database, supplied by InterSystems, providing authorised clinicians with secure access to the complete patient history.
The Brentford Casualty Plus centre opened with 26 staff. As further staff are added and further planned Casualty Plus centres open, staff will able to remotely access the web-based MedTrak system across a Wide Area Network (WAN).
The £5m Brentford centre is intended to be the first of 12 centres planned for major metropolitan areas such as Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham.
Dr Du Plessis said that Casualty Plus planned to open three or four new centres in the next year.“We know that as further sites are added they can use the same system to access and exchange x-rays, lab results and patient records,” he added.
Bill Mackie, managing director of TrakHealth UK, said that Casualty Plus had chosen to buy all the functionality it needed from one supplier. He told E-Health Insider that the company had signed a deal with Casualty Plus that will see its EPR system used in further treatment centres as they open. “We have an agreement that covers other centres as they open.”
The contract, the value of which was not disclosed, also covers implementation, consultation and future enhancements to the software as they become available.
Mr Mackie stressed that the MedTrak system will deliver functionality to support all areas of activity and treatment. “It’s not just minor injuries it’s also images, including Dicom standard diagnostic images. They also have a lab on site and we will provide the laboratory and pharmacy software.”
Asked whether the MedTrack system could be linked to either the national ‘data spine’ or Integrated Care Records Service being developed by the NHS National Programme for IT, Dr Du Plessis said: “We know the system can be integrated because it uses the same HL7 standards chosen by the NHS, and the MedTrak system is about to go live in a number of NHS trusts.”
He revealed that discussions are already underway with one local London acute trust to exchange diagnostic images so they can be included in the patient’s EPR. The same exchanges of patient data could also occur with general practices if they had a standard way to import data from other systems. “We have discussed coming up with a common file that could be exported that we could send to them.”
Mr Mackie added it was not yet clear how private healthcare providers fitted into the National Programme. “But that’s a policy and procedure decision discussion, and not down to the technology.”
He said that his own personal reading of government health policy, particularly the Patient Choice agenda, is that the NHS will increasingly contract with private care providers and need to exchange information.
Based in Sydney, Australia, TrakHealth has a number of NHS customers including Edinburgh Royal Infirmary NHS Trust, Lothian University Hospitals NHS Trust. The company has also customers in Australia, Asia, Middle East, Europe and Russia.