HealthSpace seeks second opinion

NHS Connecting for Health is seeking views from clinicians on the future of its personal health record project HealthSpace, following a similar survey for patients.

The online survey for clinicians asks doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals for their views on potential HealthSpace services.

The patient and clinician surveys follow the news last month that staff working on the expansion of HealthSpace had been stood down and an £80m-plus business case for developing the portal had been kicked into the long grass.

The survey for clinicians seeks views on a range of potential functionality including online access for patients to test results, online access to medical records, online GP appointment booking and online systems to enable patients to record physiological measurements such as blood pressure and peak flow rates.

Clinicians are asked to indicate whether they think each feature would be useful to patients and whether they would be interested in making the feature available to patients.

Clinicians are also asked to identify the main benefits to patients of using a personal health portal such as HealthSpace and to indicate what they believe the benefit would be to clinicians.

Dr Gillian Braunold, clinical director of HealthSpace and the Summary Care Record, said HealthSpace had the ability to empower patients to get more involved in decisions about their care and to enrich communication and ultimately the relationship between doctor and patient.

She added: “We value greatly the views and experience of the many thousands of people in the professions and this survey is fundamental to ensuring we capture those views and use them to inform our work in the future. I would encourage as many of my colleagues as possible to take part in this survey and make sure their voices are heard.”

Currently the HealthSpace service offers a diary features with a calendar/reminder service and address book, personal health history with the ability to record key metrics for chronic disease management, a search system for local NHS services and access to the Choose and Book online booking service.