Bridgewater builds integrated record

Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Trust is using money from the technology fund to develop a fully integrated digital care record and mobile access with TPP’s SystmOne.

The trust received £1.6m from the ‘Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards: Technology Fund’, which gave out just under £182m in total to 131 trusts.

Dave Smith, Bridgewater’s associate director of IT, told EHI the trust is using the money to develop an integrated digital care record with SystmOne to replace a number of its legacy systems.

Smith said approximately 3,000 staff will use the record, with modules including district nursing, community hospitals, child health, walk-in centres, and specialist services such as sexual health and dental health.

“It [SystmOne] has the capability and it is very flexible – it’s probably the only thing out there that has the modules to fit the vast majority of the services we provide.”

The trust is also developing a mobile working environment to provide record access to frontline staff.

Smith said the trust started working on an updated mobile application with TPP about 18 months ago to give clinicians remote access to a full view of a patient record, whether they are online or offline.

The application will be fully integrated into the system, with any changes made in SystmOne automatically updated.

Smith said the trust is still testing the elements of the application, and will start rolling it out to district nursing and children’s services teams from the end of August.

He said the trust started implementing SystmOne two years ago, and is about 65%-70% of the way through the implementation process.

Its current focus is on migrating its legacy systems, with that work expected to be completed by the end of September.

Smith said the project will allow the trust to “do away with paper” and give staff access to the records they need to view regardless of their location.

“It’s a great enabler for us to take the next step and go out delivering a proper IDCR irrespective of location.”

A TPP spokeperson said: “TPP are delighted to be working closely with Bridgewater Community Healthcare, an organisation that is continually innovative and forward-thinking in their use of IT.

“We are looking forward to seeing the benefits this will bring to healthcare staff and patients across the area.”

Bridgewater provides community and specialist services to over 800,000 people living in Ashton, Leigh and Wigan, Halton and St Helens, and Warrington.

The ‘Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards: Technology Fund’ was set up to support health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s call for a ‘paperless’ NHS by 2018, and NHS England’s guidance on creating an ‘integrated digital care record’, which came out last July.

Bidding for the second round of tech fund money, now called the ‘Integrated Digital Care Technology Fund’, opened in March and closes on 14 July.