NHS Lanarkshire has ordered the Vision 360 clinical data sharing system for its 98 GP practices.
Vision 360 project manager for NHS Lanarkshire, Ranald Swanson, said it was being installed principally as a disaster recovery system and as a remote access solution for its practices.
“Looking further forward, we think it will also give them flexibility as part of a Lanarkshire clinical portal to improve data sharing between acute and primary care,” he said.
The system is also being ordered by NHS Lothian, which provides services for 800,000 people, making it the second largest population area of Scotland. In Lothian, 125 practices will use the system. Lanarkshire serves 500,000 people.
Vision 360 is a secure system that allows GPs to access their patient records away from their practices and allows the sharing of patient records between authorised health workers.
Vision 360 will ultimately be used within Lanarkshire and Lothian to feed a clinical portal to share patient records with other healthcare workers in the area, starting with allowing hospital doctors to access primary care records.
INPS managing director Max Brighton said the advantage of using Vision 360 for GPs is that it works with the existing clinical systems in use in their practices.
“They don’t need to ‘rip and replace’ even if they are not already a Vision system user,” he said.
“This saves a huge amount of cost and disruption whilst crucially retaining all of the benefits of a central system – it’s a real win-win situation for the local health economies.”
Vision 360 was launched at the end of 2010. It is now used by more than 200 practices across the UK and has been ordered by nearly 400 more.