Northamptonshire shared care record on track for £1m in savings

Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) has reported that its shared care record programme is on track to deliver more than £1 million in savings across the lifetime of the project.

The Northamptonshire Care Record went live in 2023, joining up care records for more than 800,000 people in the county and ensuring that the professionals directly involved in their care can instantly access the information they need to support them.

Matthew Hutton, digital lead at Northamptonshire ICB, said: “We were bottom of the digital maturity rankings prior to 2023.

“We knew that had to change – and we knew it could.”

The shared care record, delivered in partnership with Graphnet Health, is on track to deliver more than £1m in savings, driven by improved access to information, reduced duplication and more efficient care coordination.

The ICB has also seen productivity benefits through its use of population health analytics. A recent survey of users across health and local authority partners found that 60% of users are saving more than half an hour per week, with some teams saving up to two hours.

Taken together, this equates to an estimated additional £1m in time savings across the system.

Analytics capability

Northamptonshire is now applying its analytics capability to support prevention and reduce avoidable admissions, including identifying patients most likely to benefit from remote monitoring and early intervention.

“We can see who is most likely to be hospitalised in the next 12 months and target support before they reach crisis point,” said Hutton.

Data flows into the shared care record and is then persisted into population health analytics, with new use cases reviewed through a clinical steering group to ensure that they meet direct care requirements and follow Caldicott principles.

This model has allowed the ICB to scale access and insight without repeated, resource-intensive approval processes.

Digital capability

Alongside technical delivery, the ICB has invested in building digital capability across its workforce.

Teams are now able to create and adapt dashboards themselves using a drag-and-drop analytics model supported by clear data definitions, reducing reliance on supplier build and speeding up insight delivery.

The ICB has also expanded data skills through apprenticeships, growing from an initial cohort of 22 staff to more than 150 people developing data capability across partner organisations.

Meanwhile in October, Graphnet and Luscii announced the launch of the Graphnet RM integrated platform, which combines remote monitoring with population health and shared care records.